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Brief outline of the procedure

The appellant/opponent appealed the OD’s decision to reject the opposition.

By letter dated 29.06.22, the opponent requested that the OP be held in person instead of by ViCo.

Opponent’s representative is based in Munich. Respondent’s/proprietor’s opponent is based in Wiesbaden.

The board decided on 21.07.2022 to hold the OP by ViCo.

Brief outline of the procedure

The application was refused for lack of clarity. The applicant appealed the decision.

The ED held that independent claim 1 was not clear. In particular, in feature [1.8] the term “fluorescence data” was undefined, and, consequently, the step of “generating multicomponent data” was not clear.

The board confirmed the lack of clarity for the MR and the AR1 on file.

Brief outline of the procedure

Both opponents appealed the OD’s decision to maintain the patent in amended form according to a MR filed during OP.

Independent claim 1 as maintained is the same as granted claim 1.

Contrary to the OD, the BA came to the conclusion that claim1 as granted infringes Art 123(2).

Brief outline of the case

The ED rejected applicant’s request for re-establishment of rights in respect of the time limit for the payment of the renewal fee for the thirteenth year with surcharge and stated that European patent application No. 06755766.0 was deemed to be withdrawn as of 01.12.2019. For the ED the request for re-establishment was not even admissible.

Brief outline of the procedure

Both proprietor and opponent appealed the decision of the OD to maintain the patent according to AR1.

Claim 8 as granted was held to infringe Art 123(2) so that the patent could not be maintained as granted.

The proprietor filed new AR in response to the opponent’s statement of grounds of appeal,