Key points
- This decision dismissing a petition for review was taken by a three-member panel during oral proceedings held on 29.09.2025. The decision was issued in writing on 10.02.2026.
- There is no public or official target for how long decision writing in R cases should take. Given that in three-member panel decisions, the decision is to unanimously reject the petition as being clearly unallowable and/or clearly inadmissible, the writing of the decision should not be very difficult - it can't be a borderline case. Given the President of the BoA being the Chair in this case, and considering the legislative purpose of Rule 102 EPC - see especially Rule 102(1) EPC, I'm still surprised it took more than three months.
- " The petition for review concerns decision T 0314/20 ... dated 16 November 2023 (the decision under review). The decision was notified on 20 December 2024."
- It was Board 3.3.04 that needed more than a year to write the decision. This is, of course, well beyond the period of three months specified in Art 15(9). It also caused a significant delay in the petition for review procedure by more than a year.
- One of the parties had filed a request for acceleration of the appeal proceedings after the oral proceedings and after the oral decision had been taken. The TBA denied the request and replied that "In light of the above, the Board will issue the written reasons for its decision at a time that is consistent with its members' workload, and in any event not before March 202[4]." Of course, the Board needed until December 2024.
- If we infer from this remark that the delay was not due to, e.g., a Board member's illness, but to 'workload', we may observe a broader 'management' issue under Board 3.3.04 (at that time).
- I'm not sure whether Board 3.3.04 currently better meets the target of Art. 15(9) RPBA.
- To be clear, I think it is also the responsibility of the Board of Appeals Unit's management to monitor whether any TBA is overloaded or experiencing exceptional circumstances (e.g., board members being unavailable due to health reasons).
- The opposition was filed in 2017. The entry into the EP phase was in 2009.
EPO
The link to the decision is provided after the jump.
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