e) Filing a slightly amended claim announced in good time 

In T 278/20 the board admitted a new main request (filed as auxiliary request 5b after receipt of the board's preliminary opinion) for the following reasons. Auxiliary request 5b was identical to auxiliary request 5a, which had already been filed at first instance and with the reply, the only difference being that a reference back to claim 20 had been deleted from claim 24. What was more, the respondent (patent proprietor) had already requested in the reply that, if the board were to endorse the objection to this reference, the decision be based on a version in which it had been corrected. Finding that the later filing of auxiliary request 5b had merely formalised that announcement without making the proceedings more complex or taking them in a new direction, the board concluded that there were exceptional circumstances (Art. 13(2) RPBA 2020).