4.3. Withdrawal of request for oral proceedings
In the absence of anything that can be regarded as a statement of grounds of appeal, the lack of any substantive response to a notification of the inadmissibility of the appeal is considered as equivalent to an abandonment of a request for oral proceedings initially made in the notice of appeal (see inter alia T 1042/07, T 234/10, T 179/11, T 2162/14, T 95/17, T 1293/18, T 362/18, T 1321/18, T 278/21). Holding oral proceedings would have served no other purpose than confirming the (undisputed) preliminary finding that no statement of grounds of appeal had been filed (T 2377/19).
In T 1573/20 the board considered that this situation was comparable to the "clearly inadmissible appeals" considered in decisions G 1/97 (OJ 2000, 322) and G 2/19 (OJ 2020, A87). These decisions were concerned with appeals by a non-party or based on non-existing remedies only. The board was convinced that the Enlarged Board did not consider these examples to be exhaustive. Rather, it acknowledged as a matter of principle that there are exceptions to the right to oral proceedings under Art. 116 EPC (see also T 2377/19).