4. Notification to third parties

In T 261/07 the decision to revoke the patent was delivered to a person who was not an employee of the patentee (to whom the notification was addressed), but of a company that received letters on behalf of the patentee. No acknowledgement of receipt was on file for the patentee, who claimed never to have received the decision. Following T 172/04 and T 743/05, the board held that for reasons of legal certainty, delivery to the addressee is effected once a person authorised by the addressee has received the letter (similarly T 261/07 and T 2210/10). In T 1535/10 too, the board held that, where the recipient did not operate his own mail office and instead made use of an external mail office, he had to accept that the external office would be treated as if it were his own in matters relating to the delivery of communications subject to deadlines. Any delay in forwarding such communications on the part of the external office would thus be attributed to the recipient's sphere of risk.

In J 35/97 a communication was handed to a third party not authorised by the appellant to accept it. The said party was in the addressee's business premises, but not an employee. In the Legal Board's view, that meant that notification according to the relevant German provisions had not occurred. Nor did the party qualify under any of the categories of "substitute addressee". There was also no evidence that the appellant had ever seen the communication. The board therefore found the EPO had not shown notification to have been properly effected.

In J 28/10 the representative's office was located in a large building in a business-park and incoming mail for the law firm was left at the doorman's desk. The doorman was the employee of a security company, this company having a contractual relation with the company that administrated the business-park where the representative rented office space. This led the Legal Board to the conclusion that the representative was fully aware of the details and functioning of this system of reception of postal mail, including any risk associated with it. By using an external service for receiving postal mail, the representative accepted that this external service would be treated as if it were its own in matters relating to the delivery of communications subject to deadlines.