b) No obligation to consider each and every argument 

It is not necessary to consider each and every argument of the parties in detail in a decision (R 19/10, R 17/11, R 6/12, R 15/12, R 19/12 of 12 April 2016 date: 2016-04-12, R 2/13, R 5/15).

In R 13/12 the Enlarged Board stated that while the boards have an obligation to discuss in their decisions issues and arguments to the extent that they are relevant for the decision, they may disregard irrelevant arguments (see also R 21/10). In R 16/14 the Enlarged Board stated that not explicitly addressing specific points which, in the deciding organ's view, did not have to be addressed in order to arrive at an understandable decision did not mean that such points are ignored. In R 8/16 the Enlarged Board stated that not addressing specific arguments in the decision was not necessarily a fundamental violation of the petitioner's right to be heard.

In R 11/21 the board had not considered some arguments of the petitioner to be relevant. The Enlarged Board stated that while it might have been desirable for the considerations regarding the lack of relevance of these aspects to have been explicitly set out in the decision under review, not doing so did not amount to a deficiency in the board's reasoning. Therefore, the Enlarged Board could not establish that the board’s reasoning constituted a violation of Art. 113(1) EPC, let alone a fundamental one.

In R 19/12 of 12 April 2016 date: 2016-04-12 the Enlarged Board stated that the allegedly insufficient consideration, by a board, of arguments concerning a procedural defect before the department of first instance could only constitute a fundamental violation of the right to be heard when the alleged procedural defect impacted on the decision at first instance.

In R 8/17 the Enlarged Board held that it would have been highly questionable and contradictory for the board to have dealt in substance with an argument of a party in the written reasons after it had not allowed a discussion on it in the oral proceedings.

In R 14/22 the petitioner was of the view that its submissions made with regard to inventive step should have been considered by the board also in any further context in which these submissions became relevant for the board’s decisions. The Enlarged Board held that it was not the board's task to make the argument for the petitioner by taking the petitioner’s submission out of the relevant context in which it had been presented and by elaborating on the submissions on the basis of what would be obvious and beneficial for the petitioner to argue.