7.1 Admissibility of the protest as checked by the formalities officer 

Before initiating the protest procedure the formal admissibility of the protest in the sense of Rule 40.2(c) (Chapter I) must be checked.

To be admissible the protest should satisfy the following requirements:

(a)The applicant must have paid the prescribed protest fee (Rule 40.2(e)), and

(b)The payment under protest must be accompanied by a reasoned statement, i.e. the reasoned statement should have been filed with the payment or at the latest within the time limit set in Form 206. 

The reasoned statement must comply with Rule 40.2(c); i.e. applicants should argue why the international application complies with the requirement of unity of invention or why the amount of the required additional fee is excessive. In the protest applicants should question the number of additional fees that they have been invited to pay, and not the amount of a single additional fee.

The payment of the protest fee and the filing of a purported reasoned statement are assessed by specially trained formalities officers. If the formalities officer finds any deficiencies, the applicant is informed of them by way of Form 212 or Form 224. Any substantive analysis is made by the Review Panel when assessing the justification of the protest (see GL/PCT‑EPO B‑VII, 7.2). If the applicant merely submits a statement of disagreement without reasoning, the Review Panel will refer to the reasoning contained in the invitation to pay additional search fees (Form 206) when taking its decision.