3.5. Scope of review by the Enlarged Board
3.5.3 No suspensory effect – review of substantive law excluded
Article 112a(3) EPC makes it clear that the petition for review is an extraordinary legal remedy the filing of which does not affect the force of res judicata of the decision under attack. Implicitly it follows that a successful petition for review results in a decision of the Enlarged Board which sets aside the decision of the board of appeal, i.e. overturns its res judicata effect, and re-opens appeal proceedings (explanatory remarks in OJ SE 4/2007, 128). Decisions of the boards of appeal must remain final decisions (see also R 1/08).
Under no circumstances may the petition for review be a means to review the application of substantive law. This restriction is justified because the function of the petition for review is to remedy intolerable deficiencies occurring in individual appeal proceedings, not to further the development of EPO procedural practice or to ensure the uniform application of the law (explanatory remarks in OJ SE 4/2007, 126; R 13/10: established case law since R 1/08). The Enlarged Board has no competence under Art. 112a EPC to examine the merits of the decision and to go into the substance of a case (R 4/09, R 13/10, R 5/15, R 7/17, R 3/21, R 11/21, R 15/21, R 12/20), not even indirectly (R 19/11, R 6/13, R 3/18, R 24/22). A review of the correct application of substantive law would amount to the Enlarged Board being a third instance which has been explicitly excluded (R 3/09; see also R 13/09, R 3/18). It is not the purpose of petition for review proceedings to evaluate whether or not the reasons selected by the board are appropriate (R 13/14, R 2/18, R 12/22); the Enlarged Board cannot replace a board's substantive assessment with its own (R 9/14). The Enlarged Board cannot act as a third instance or second-tier appellate tribunal in petition proceedings (R 9/10, R 11/11, R 5/13; see also R 1/08, R 3/09, R 13/09, R 3/18).
Not being competent to decide on the merits of a case necessarily implies that the Enlarged Board has no power to control the normal exercise a board makes of its discretion (R 10/09, see also R 6/17 and R 4/22). The exercise of discretion is only subject to review if arbitrary or manifestly illegal (R 10/11, R 13/21, R 12/22, R 24/22), thereby involving a fundamental violation of the right to be heard (R 9/11; see also R 17/11, R 6/20, R 7/21, R 4/22, R 24/22). In R 13/21 the Enlarged Board clarified that in proceedings under Art. 112a EPC, it was at most necessary and permissible to examine (i) whether the party had been heard on the question of the admission of new submissions or new requests and/or (ii) whether there had been an error of discretion (see also R 4/22). The latter examination should focus on two aspects at most, namely whether there had in fact been discretionary power available to the board, and whether the board had recognised that fact (abuse of or failure to exercise discretionary power) and whether the discretionary power had been exercised in an arbitrary or manifestly unlawful manner (abuse or misuse of discretion).
In R 13/12 the Enlarged Board stated that it had to remain vigilant and thwart any attempt to blur the frontier between what might clearly be a matter for a violation of the right to be heard under Art. 113 and 112a(2)(c) EPC, and anything else presented as a violation of the right to be heard but which actually pertained to the substantive merits of the decision under review.
In R 25/22 the Enlarged Board held that not being competent to judge the correctness of a decision, however, did not mean that the Enlarged Board was in principle prevented from analysing and understanding the board's reasoning. In order to determine whether an ignored argument by a party or a surprising new argument by a board had indeed been causal for a board’s decision, the Enlarged Board would inevitably have to go into the substance of the case and at least understand the parties' arguments and the board's reasoning (see also in this chapter V.B.4.3.2).
In R 3/18 the Enlarged Board noted that the question at issue, i.e. the "estoppel situation" as characterised by the petitioner, might, in principle be eligible for a referral to the Enlarged Board under Art. 112 EPC. However, the Enlarged Board held that an absence of such a referral under Art. 112 EPC did not entitle the Enlarged Board in proceedings under Art. 112a EPC to deal with the petitioner's request to correct this estoppel situation and to set aside the decision under review.
The following issues cannot be considered in review proceedings:
– the assessment of inventive step (R 1/08, R 12/09 of 15 January 2010 date: 2010-01-15, R 6/11, R 14/13, R 6/15), including the determination of the closest prior art (R 5/13)
– the interpretation of a prior art document (R 9/08, R 8/09, R 4/11)
– the assessment of clarity (R 15/10)
– the assessment of public prior use (R 19/10)
– the assessment of evidence (R 21/09)
– the conclusions in relation to arguments, facts and evidence, including the question of which party to the appeal proceedings bore the burden of presenting arguments, facts and evidence, or to what extent any counter-evidence was required (R 11/21)
– whether to remit a case to the department of first instance (R 10/09, R 12/09 date: 2010-01-15, R 9/10, R 7/13, R 24/22)
– whether to admit a new request (R 10/11, R 11/11, R 13/11, R 4/13) or a new document (R 10/09, R 17/11) under Art. 12 RPBA 2007 or under Art. 13(1) RPBA 2007 (R 1/13, R 4/14, R 6/17)
– whether an appeal is admissible (R 10/09, R 10/14)
– whether or not the exception to reformatio in peius mentioned in G 1/99 (OJ 2001, 381) applies to a particular case (R 4/09; see also R 10/14)
– whether to refer a question to the Enlarged Board under Art. 112 EPC (R 7/13, R 17/14)
– whether the boards are empowered to decide on a request to hold oral proceedings before the examining division in Munich instead of in The Hague (R 13/14)
– sufficiency of disclosure (R 2/14 of 22 April 2016 date: 2016-04-22).
- R 0012/23
In R 12/23 the Enlarged Board of Appeal (hereinafter referred to as "EBA") summarised the petitioner’s assertions concerning procedural deficiencies regarding the ground for petition mentioned in Art. 112a(2)(c) in conjunction with Art. 113(1) EPC as follows.
(i) the petitioner had had no opportunity during the oral proceedings to argue on the standard applied by the board in the written decision.
(ii) the board had neglected the "gold standard" as one of two alternative approache.
- in the decision, the board had applied only the "essentiality test" and not also the "gold standard" thereby contravening R 2/14 an.
- the board had provided no opportunity to discuss the "gold standard", during the oral proceedings; an.
(iii) the decision was not sufficiently reasoned on the "gold standard" or on the "essentiality test".
The EBA found that the first alleged procedural deficiency was obviously unfounded, because it was in direct contradiction with the petitioner’s own conclusion which made it clear that the discussion in the oral proceedings had been "identically" mirrored in the written decision.
On the second alleged procedural deficiency, the EBA stated that it could not find that the board had obviously not applied the "gold standard" due to the fact that it may also have examined the criteria of the "essentiality test". The EBA had to rely on the board’s declaration that it had applied the "gold standard", given that the EBA was prevented from scrutiny of the application of the law, i.e. whether the board had applied the "gold standard" in an incorrect manner.
The EBA considered whether the R 2/14 rationale would at all apply to the case in hand and concluded that in R 2/14 it had been held that the board would have needed to address (three) alternative factual approaches to assessing sufficiency of disclosure. In the case in hand, however, the (two) approaches in question were legal approaches. Having opted for one of them and thus having determined the law, the board was under no obligation to apply the facts of the case to an alternative legal approach..
In this regard, the EBA noted that a board deciding on a case must establish the facts and apply the law to them. If a party puts forward several alternative sets of facts in order to support a specific finding of law, then the board must assess whether any of these sets support that finding and may only reject the suggested finding once it has concluded that none of the sets of facts justifies it. The EBA emphasised that there is no need to discuss alternative legal approaches, as distinguished from factual approaches, in the decision, because the board determines the law, in particular the correct legal approach. However, even though this had not been necessary, the board in the case in hand had still applied both approaches, i.e. the "gold standard" and the "essentiality test"..
The finding that the requirement to discuss alternative approaches set out in R 2/14 did not apply in this case presupposed that the board had given the party an opportunity to provide its comments on the correct legal approach. The petitioner itself stated that this had been the case. If, during the oral proceedings, the petitioner had considered that the board should not apply the "essentiality test" under the guise of the "gold standard", then it should have alerted the board to its view. The EBA concluded that there had been no violation of the petitioner’s right to be heard with respect to the second asserted procedural deficiency.
Concerning the third asserted procedural deficiency, the EBA recalled the criteria laid down in R 8/15 and R 10/18. It held that in line with point 1 of the Catchword of R 8/15, the board had addressed submissions it had identified as being relevant, in the reasons for the decision. The question was whether the board had also substantively considered those submissions as also required in point 1 of that Catchword. The EBA held that this had been the case and thus considered the third asserted procedural deficiency clearly unfounded.
The EBA concluded that the petition for review was clearly unallowable, since none of the three asserted fundamental deficiencies constituted a violation of the right to be heard.
- R 0012/21
In R 12/21 prüfte die Große Beschwerdekammer (GBK), ob die Kammer entsprechend dem seitens der Antragstellerin geltend gemachten sechsten bis achten Verfahrensmangel gegen das Recht auf rechtliches Gehör verstoßen hatte (Art. 112a (2) c) i.V.m. Art. 113 (1) EPÜ). Diese Mängel betrafen die Nichtzulassung des Hilfsantrags. Die Nichtzulassung des Hilfsantrags wurde in der angefochtenen Entscheidung auf zwei Gründe kumulativ gestützt: Fehlen der Voraussetzungen von Art. 12 (2) VOBK 2007 und eine prima facie fehlende Neuheit des Gegenstands von Anspruch 1 des Hilfsantrags.
Die GBK merkte an, dass zur Frage der Zulassung neuen Vorbringens in einem Teil der Rechtsprechung der GBK zu Art. 112a EPÜ verlangt wird, dass der Beteiligte zu dessen Zulassung (lediglich) ausreichend zu hören ist, nach einem anderen Teil der Rechtsprechung ist darüber hinaus die Ausübung des Ermessens im Rahmen der Zulassung nicht nur auf Willkür, sondern auch auf offensichtliche Unrichtigkeit zu überprüfen (R 6/20). Der GBK zufolge stellte sich vorliegend bereits die Frage, ob die Antragstellerin ausreichend gehört worden war, und darüber hinaus ggf., ob die zutreffenden Rechtsgrundlagen für die Ausübung des Ermessens zu Grunde gelegt und das Ermessen damit nicht offensichtlich unrichtig angewandt worden war. Nur bei positiver Beantwortung beider Fragen könne der Überprüfungsantrag unbegründet sein.
Da die GBK die erste Frage negativ beantwortete und der Überprüfungsantrag aus diesem Grund bereits Erfolg hatte, kam es auf die zweite Frage nicht an. In der Entscheidung der GBK wurde daher lediglich die Frage des ausreichenden Gehörs der Antragstellerin im Hinblick auf die Nichtzulassung des Hilfsantrags vor dem Hintergrund der geltend gemachten fehlenden Möglichkeit, zur prima facie-Neuheit Stellung zu nehmen, erörtert. Den Vortrag der Antragstellerin verstand die GBK dahingehend, dass diese sich bei der Erörterung der Zulassung des Hilfsantrags 1 während der mündlichen Verhandlung nicht zum Aspekt, auf den sich die Kammer in der Entscheidungsbegründung stützte, hatte äußern dürfen, nämlich dazu ob der "hinzugefügte Schritt […] prima facie die Neuheit gegenüber D2 herstellt und damit dem Anspruch zu einer prima facie Gewährbarkeit als Zulassungskriterium unter Art. 13 (1) VOBK 2007 verhilft".
Wenn die Kammer, so die GBK, der Auffassung gewesen wäre, die technische Debatte zum hinzugefügten Merkmal in Anspruch 1 des Hilfsantrags sei bereits im Rahmen des Hauptantrags vollumfänglich geführt worden und eine weitere Debatte im Rahmen des Hilfsantrags überflüssig, hätte die Kammer die Patentinhaberin auf eben diese Auffassung hinweisen und ihr Gelegenheit zur Stellungnahme geben müssen. Dies folge bereits aus dem Wortlaut von Art. 113 (1) EPÜ, wonach Entscheidungen des EPA nur auf Gründe gestützt werden dürfen, zu denen die Beteiligten sich äußern konnten.
Die GBK kam zu dem Schluss, dass in Ermangelung des vorgenannten ausdrücklichen Ansprechens die Antragstellerin erst der schriftlichen Entscheidung entnehmen konnte, dass die Kammer die Nichtzulassung auch auf eine fehlende prima facie-Neuheit des Gegenstands von Anspruch 1 gestützt hatte. Daher sei der Patentinhaberin auch eine diesbezügliche Rüge nach R. 106 EPÜ nicht möglich gewesen. Sie sei damit daran gehindert gewesen, ihrer grundsätzlich bestehenden Pflicht nachzukommen, von sich aus im Verfahren ihre Interessen aktiv wahrzunehmen.
Im Umstand, dass die Kammer die prima facie-Neuheit des Gegenstands von Anspruch 1 des Hilfsantrags bei der Debatte über die Ausübung des Zulassungs-Ermessens im Rahmen von Art. 13 (1) VOBK 2007 nicht ausdrücklich angesprochen hatte und dazu nicht hatte vortragen lassen, sah die GBK einen schwerwiegenden Verstoß gegen das Recht auf rechtliches Gehör der Patentinhaberin (Art. 113 (1) EPÜ). Es könne nämlich nicht von vornherein ausgeschlossen werden, dass die Ermessensentscheidung im Falle eines Ansprechens und damit einhergehend der Gelegenheit zur Stellungnahme zur prima facie-Neuheit des Gegenstands von Anspruch 1 des Hilfsantrags anders ausgefallen gewesen wäre.