11.4. Remboursement de la taxe de recours en cas de révision préjudicielle
11.4.4 Décision de révision maintenant la décision antérieure
Dans la décision T 691/91, la chambre a estimé que l'art. 109 CBE 1973 prévoit deux possibilités du point de vue juridique : le maintien ou l'annulation de la décision attaquée. Dans cette affaire, la division d'examen avait choisi une troisième voie, en l'occurrence le maintien de la décision antérieure par le biais d'une décision relative à la révision préjudicielle du recours, ce qui a eu pour conséquence que le requérant avait dû former un second recours contre la décision de révision. La possibilité choisie par la chambre n'est pas prévue par les dispositions de l'art. 109 CBE 1973 et la chambre a estimé que cette décision était entachée d'un excès de pouvoir et a ordonné le remboursement de la seconde taxe de recours. Le remboursement de la première taxe de recours a également été ordonné au motif qu'il y avait eu violation du droit d'être entendu au cours de la procédure d'examen (voir aussi T 252/91).
- T 2381/19
Catchword:
1. Two successive appeals, interlocutory revision, request for reimbursing first or second appeal fee. 2. Giving one single ground for the refusal, presently a violation of Article 123(2) EPC, may not be procedurally optimal, but is in itself not a procedural violation. Depending on the subject-matter claimed, it can be a defendable procedure to refrain from examining certain substantive issues, such as inventive step and novelty, as long as the division is not convinced that the potential distinguishing features have a proper basis under Article 123(2) EPC. An erroneous assessment of a substantive issue by the division is not a substantial procedural violation, either. In sum, there was no basis for the ordering of the reimbursement of the (first) appeal fee in the decision allowing the interlocutory revision (Reasons 5.9). 3. The board notes that the applicant may not have been able to avoid paying the second appeal fee in all circumstances. Even assuming for the sake of argument that the division would not have allowed the interlocutory revision and instead would have referred the first appeal to the Board of Appeal under Article 109(2) EPC, the payment of a second appeal fee might still have become unavoidable. Since the first refusal decision only dealt with added subject-matter, it would still have been quite likely that the case would have been remitted to the examining division for examination of the outstanding substantive issues even after a successful (first) appeal (Reasons 5.13). 4. Once the examining division reopens the examination, it is formally not prevented from re-examining all the issues which were already the subject of the previous decision. The principle of prohibition of reformatio in peius does not apply in this situation (Reasons 5.18).
- Compilation 2023 “Abstracts of decisions”