Résumé de EPC2000 R 124(1) pour la décision T1482/21 du 10.05.2023

See also abstract under Article 122 EPC. In T 1482/21 the appellant requested that the minutes of the oral proceedings be corrected and that the written decision be based on the corrected minutes. As the request had been made before the written decision terminating the appeal proceedings was issued, it was dealt with therein (T 1891/20). The board noted that under R. 124(1) EPC, minutes of oral proceedings are to be drawn up, containing the essential points of the oral proceedings and the relevant statements made by the parties. Under Art. 6(4) RPBA 2020, these minutes are to be drawn up by a member of the deciding board or the registrar, as designated by the chair. Citing T 1891/20, T 212/97, T 642/97, T 468/99 and R 7/17, the board recalled that it was in the discretion of the minute writer what to consider "essential" or "relevant". The board added that a summary of the arguments made by the parties during the oral proceedings was usually not included in the minutes (T 1721/07, T 263/05), and that the board was responsible for deciding what needs to be recorded in the minutes, not the parties (T 468/99, T 1721/07). The appellant argued that the presentation of facts in the minutes was incorrect as far as the (non-)maintenance of the objections of insufficiency of disclosure was concerned. According to the unanimous recollection of all five members of the board, the representative of the appellant had explicitly stated in the oral proceedings before the board that it did not maintain the objections as to insufficiency of disclosure and lack of novelty against the new auxiliary request. The appellant thus requested the insertion of a paragraph into the minutes which was, according to the unanimous recollection of all members of the board, factually incorrect. Furthermore, the appellant argued that the following statement in the minutes was an incorrect representation of that part of the oral proceedings: "[t]he respondent then filed a corresponding amended version of the description, to which neither the appellant nor the Board objected". The appellant stated that after an amended version of the description had been presented, it had objected by indicating some further parts of the description requiring amendment. One of these objections had been allowed by the board and had resulted in a further (hand-written) amendment. The board noted in this regard that the minutes stated that "[t]he need for adaptation of the description to the claims of the new auxiliary request was discussed". According to the unanimous recollection of all members of the board, the appellant had initially argued that several passages of the description needed adaptation, only some of which, however, had also been considered by the board to be in need of adaptation. The board recalled that a summary of arguments provided by the parties was usually not included in the minutes. It was thus neither incomplete nor incorrect that the minutes stated that, after discussion on the need for adaptation, the board "provided the parties with its conclusion on the required adaptations." The chairman had stressed that the appellant's explicit confirmation that it did not have any objections against the amended version of the description, had meant that the additional objections against the description which had been raised at the beginning of the discussion on adaptation would not be dealt with in the written decision, and the appellant had agreed. The board noted that it was immaterial whether, in the course of the discussion on the adaptation of the description, all adaptations to the description which had been considered necessary by the board had been implemented by the respondent in one go or in multiple, subsequent steps. What mattered was that the final version of the adapted description which had been in the end filed by the respondent in the appeal proceedings - and which was attached to the minutes - was the one against which the appellant had had no objections. This was correctly reflected in the minutes. The request for amendment of the minutes of the oral proceedings was therefore refused.