Résumé de EPC2000 Art 125 pour la décision T2726/17 du 16.12.2022

In T 2726/17 the board applied the principles of the protection of legitimate expectations and of good faith (citing T 14/89 as an example) and considered a notice of appeal filed via the EPO web-form filing service as having been duly received. The board pointed out that according to Art. 2 of the Decision of the President of the EPO of 10 September 2014 (the "Decision") the filing of appeal documents via the EPO web-form filing service was not permitted. The consequence of doing so was that such documents were deemed not to have been received, see Art. 2(2) of the Decision. Pursuant to the last sentence of Art. 2(2) of the Decision, the sender of such web-form filed documents, if identifiable, was to be notified without delay of this deemed non-receipt. In the present case, the sender of the notice of appeal was identifiable. According to the board, between the actual filing of the notice of appeal on 13 September 2017 and the final date of the time limit for filing the notice of appeal (6 October 2017) there had been sufficient time for the EPO to notice the irregularity in the filing of the notice of appeal, inform the appellant (applicant) thereof and for the appellant to resubmit the notice of appeal by accepted means. It appeared from the file that no such notification was issued. The appellant confirmed this in its letter dated 4 January 2018.