T 1480/16 - Cancelling dependent and independent claims

Key points

• The Board concludes that cancelling the method claims in an auxiliary request is not considered as an amendment to the patentee's appeal case. Hence, AR-5 corresponding to AR-3 with the method claims deleted was admitted. The apparatus claim of AR-5 was also novel, unlike the apparatus claim of the main request, due to the added feature of that apparatus claim. 
• T 0995/18 confirmed this approach, concluding that cancelling a dependent claim is generally not to be considered as an amendment to the patentee’s appeal case, because it is comparable to the opponent giving up an attack, according to that Board.
•  In T 0482/19, the independent product claims were deleted keeping the method claims. This was found to be an amendment to the patentee's appeal case and that auxiliary request was not admitted.
• In T 1224/15 the dependent claim lacking basis was deleted in AR-3; this request was admitted as it did not give rise to new issues.
• I'm not sure if the case law is entirely consistent as of yet. 

Orientierungssatz:
Die Streichung der Verfahrensansprüche in Hilfsantrag 5 gegenüber dem mit der Beschwerdeerwiderung eingereichten Hilfsantrag 3 wird nicht als Änderung des Beschwerdevorbringens gesehen, da sich dadurch keine geänderte Sachlage ergibt (siehe Punkte 2.3 der Gründe).

EPO T 1480/16 -  https://www.epo.org/law-practice/case-law-appeals/recent/t161480du1.html 
 decision text omitted.