a) General

Under Art. 107 EPC, any party to proceedings adversely affected by a decision may appeal. A party is adversely affected within the meaning of Art. 107 EPC if the decision fails to meet that party's wishes. This had to be assessed by comparing the request at first instance with the substance of the decision (see T 244/85, OJ 1988, 216; T 1682/13). According to T 234/86 (OJ 1989, 79) a party is adversely affected if the decision does not accede to his main requests or to auxiliary requests preceding the allowed auxiliary request (see also T 392/91). This is not the case if the patent proprietor withdraws his main request or preceding auxiliary requests and agrees with the allowed auxiliary request (T 506/91, T 528/93, T 613/97, T 54/00, T 434/00).

The question of whether or not a party is adversely affected by a decision taken by an authority as defined in Art. 106 EPC arises in connection with Art. 107 EPC in order to establish who may appeal.

An appeal is inadmissible where the appellant is seeking to amend not the decision itself but the reasons for it (T 84/02) or the sole aim is to settle a point of law not relevant to the case (J 7/00, see also T 1790/08). Abandoning claims to have a prompt decision in order to be in a position to appeal results in the appeal being inadmissible where the patentee's requests were actually granted by the opposition division (T 848/00).

In T 735/13, the board held that appellants who had agreed with a decision at the time but later changed their minds could not be regarded as adversely affected; an adverse effect required a discrepancy between the decision and what they had been requesting when it was issued (see also T 1558/21).