5.4. Isolated mistake within a satisfactory system for monitoring time limits or for processing mail

An isolated mistake by an assistant that happens in a normally satisfactory system is excusable; for cases in which such a mistake occurred and the request for re-establishment was granted see, for example, T 462/02 of 11 February 2003 date: 2003-02-11, T 221/04 of 5 May 2004 date: 2004-05-05, T 836/09 of 17 February 2010 date: 2010-02-17, T 1815/15. The appellant or his representative must plausibly show that a normally effective system for monitoring time limits prescribed by the EPC was established at the relevant time in the office in question (J 2/86, J 3/86, OJ 1987, 362; J 23/92; T 428/98, OJ 2001, 494; J 3/12; J 4/12). In T 1917/20, the decisive question was whether, in the representative's office, any measures were foreseen to detect and correct errors made in the process of separating mail into "system mail" and "non-system mail". The board noted that even in small entities where sorting the mail and organising the filing system is done by one and the same person, all due care requires that a routine control of these critical and potential error-prone acts is performed.