9. Remittal to the department of first instance
9.11. Accelerating proceedings after remittal
This section has been updated to reflect case law and legislative changes up to 31 December 2023. For the previous version of this section please refer to the "Case Law of the Boards of Appeal", 10th edition (PDF). |
The EPC is silent on the possibility for a board to order acceleration of proceedings before the department of first instance after remittal. In T 1108/21, the board did issue such an order. It had accelerated the appeal proceedings (Art. 10(3) RPBA 2020). It then remitted the case to the opposition division for further prosecution and explicitly ordered an acceleration of the opposition proceedings. By contrast, in T 2916/19 the board refused to instruct the opposition division to accelerate the proceedings after remittal. It held that it was not empowered to impose any timeline/time constraints on the department of first instance and considered that when or at which pace the case was to be dealt with by the opposition division was a matter of managerial decisions to be taken by the department of first instance.