T 0102/12 - Request regarding description

T 0102/12

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Key point

• The Board does not decide on the requested adaption of the description, mainly because the appellant-proprietor had only pointed to this issue at the end of the oral proceedings, after the decision had been announced. 
• This confirms that a decision is effective the moment it is announced in oral proceedings.

Reasons for the Decision

[...] 3.3.7 Thus the subject-matter of claim 1 of auxiliary request 2 is inventive. Accordingly the patent is to be maintained in the form as decided by the opposition division.

3.4 At the end of the oral proceedings, the appellant-proprietor explained that there was still a request with respect to the amendment of the description. This was contained on page 10 of the letter of 19 March 2012.

[Patentee disagreeed with the deletion of two sentences from the description which had been required by the Opposition Division.]

The Board had not identified this passage to be a request, the requests being contained on page 1 of said letter of 19 March 2012. Moreover, also at the beginning of the oral proceedings when the appellant was asked to confirm the requests, no reference was made to the description and no amended description had been filed. Since the decision had already been pronounced when the appellant-proprietor pointed to this issue, this request could no longer be considered by the Board.

Order

For these reasons it is decided that:

The appeals are dismissed.