2.3.5 Document cited containing information already known

In T 643/96 the examining division relied in its decision on a document for which it gave only incomplete bibliographic data. The board held that the examining division's failure to provide the applicant with a copy of the document did not amount to a substantial procedural violation (regarding the right to be heard) because the document added nothing to the case, and contained only information already known to the applicant. See also T 1564/18 in which no communication of the examining division contained the essential legal and factual reasons leading to the finding in the appealed decision that claim 1 of the main request lacked novelty over the prior-art device considered for the first time in the novelty assessment of the refusal. Since no reason had been given why the amendments made in advance of the oral proceedings held in absentia justified the change to this new closest prior art, the decision was issued in violation of the right to be heard even though the prior-art device on which the refusal was based was disclosed in the same document as a closest prior art considered previously in the examination procedure.