e) Witness testimony and national proceedings 

In national proceedings before the Dutch District Court and Court of Appeal, several witnesses had been heard, and written statements had been introduced by both parties. The Dutch Court of Appeal could not establish an uninterrupted chain of proof that the alleged public prior uses had indeed taken place before the priority date of the contested patent. After evaluating the Dutch Appeal Court's findings, the board's judgment in T 665/95 was that no further investigations were necessary and that the conclusion of the Dutch Appeal Court could be followed, with the consequence that the subject‑matter of the granted claim 1, contrary to the impugned decision of the opposition division, was considered to be novel. Other examples of cases in which findings made in national proceedings served as evidence include T 760/89, OJ 1994, 797 (USA); T 582/90 (FR), T 1043/93 (IT), T 885/02 (NL); T 276/07 (IT); R 21/09 (UK); T 1904/12 (DE) and T 202/13 (NO).

In T 407/08 the appellant (patent proprietor) filed a copy of an expert opinion which was ordered by a German Court in a patent dispute. A statement according to general experience in this expert opinion was taken into account by the board to conclude that a given feature was not implicit to a skilled person (Art. 100(c) EPC).