p) Response to a large number of objections 

In T 24/18 the proprietor had argued among other things that the late filing of auxiliary requests 2a and 2b was justified by the change of opinion of the board and the vagueness of the relevant objections of the opponents. The reason for not having filed these requests earlier was that the proprietor had not wanted to cover all possible permutations of amendments as this would have led to an excessive number of requests due to the large number of objections raised. The board rejected this argumentation as the circumstances cited by the proprietor appeared to describe a fairly normal course of events. It was not uncommon for the board to modify its preliminary opinion in view of the details discussed or the questions raised during the oral proceedings. The allegedly high number of objections was also not a reason to justify the late filing of requests, because this was by no means an exceptional circumstance. The board further considered that the fact that the requests would not present the opponents with completely new subject-matter, was not relevant when exercising the board's limited discretion under Art. 13(2) RPBA.

In T 1686/21, on the other hand, the board pointed out that, in view of the large number of different objections raised under Art. 76(1) EPC, the number of requests to be filed at the very beginning of the appeal proceedings in order to provide appropriate fall-back positions for every possible outcome of the assessment of compliance with Art. 76(1) EPC would have been extremely high and therefore not compliant with procedural efficiency. The board considered this to be an exceptional circumstance.