3.1. Right to file a divisional application

In T 592/15 the board refused the applicant's request that the "application be maintained pending until [a] divisional application has been filed". The board understood the appellant's submissions to be a request that the board postpone the taking of the decision on the allowability of the appeal at hand until at least the appellant had filed a divisional application. The board observed that, according to the jurisprudence of the boards of appeal, requests and actions obliging a board to examine questions outside of the framework of the appeal concerned were not admissible and could not be dealt with in substance within such appeal proceedings (T 502/02). In the case at hand the request to postpone the taking of the decision on the allowability of the appeal until a divisional application had been filed would have required the board to investigate whether the appellant had indeed filed a divisional application and, as the case may be, to even postpone the oral proceedings. The board emphasised that the question of whether a divisional application has been filed was a question outside of the framework of the appeal proceedings at hand, in particular because the procedure concerning a divisional application and the procedure concerning the parent application are in principle independent (G 4/98, OJ EPO 2001, 131). As a further argument against granting the request, the board observed that the appellant would also gain complete control over the duration of the appeal proceedings, including the possibility of having them pending ad infinitum, if no divisional application was filed at all.