4.3.5 No obligation to provide detailed reasons for a decision in advance

It is settled case law that a board of appeal is not required to provide the parties in advance with all foreseeable arguments in favour of or against a request (R 1/08 with reference to G 6/95, OJ 1996, 649; see also R 13/09, R 18/09, R 4/13, R 5/15, R 6/16, R 9/18). In other words, parties are not entitled to advance indications of all reasons for a decision in detail (see e.g. R 12/09 of 15 January 2010 date: 2010-01-15, R 15/09, R 4/11, R 18/12, R 2/13, R 9/14, R 7/15, R 8/17). This principle also applies to an interpretation of a passage in the state of the art forming only part of such reasons (R 19/11, R 15/12, R 16/13), and to reasons of any level of generality (R 10/17).