c) Amendments and resulting subject-matter not surprising for the opposing party – request admitted 

In T 1482/17 the board found that the amendments (made in direct response to an argument first put forward at the oral proceedings and so justified by exceptional circumstances) amounted to an elaboration on the gist of the invention. In its view, both the amendments and the resulting subject-matter were technically straightforward and did not entail unexpected combinations, which meant they could not be regarded as surprising. It also found that the new auxiliary requests did not put the appellant (opponent 2) at a disadvantage because there was essentially no change in either the closest prior art or the invention's technical contribution.