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Confused Kat at the EPO

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

The IPKat knows that the boards of appeal at the EPO are always busy, and decisions come out at a rapid rate, typically a few decisions every day on average (even though they tend to take quite a long time to get there). He was, however, surprised to see 143 new decisions announced yesterday, so very soon after 127 decisions had only recently been announced a few days previously.

He was even more puzzled to see that these 'new' decisions included none dated later than June 2007, with some going back as far as February 2006. He would therefore like to know what is going on, and wonders if any of his readers can help. Are these decisions really new to us, or has there been a slip-up?

While he is on the subject, some readers may be interested in the EPO's recently published summary of the 'landmark' boards of appeal cases from the past year, which is available here (big pdf file). This helpfully summarises the major events of 2007 as far as legal developments at the EPO are concerned. A strangely precise statistic from this document caught the IPKat's eye, relating to the percentage of ex-parte cases settled after substantive legal review (see page 10). Of the 57.4% of cases that resulted in success (at least in part) for the applicant, 28.7% resulted in grant and 28.7% were sent back for further examination. Given the number of cases involved, and the decimal precision of the numbers, this seems a remarkable match. Is it just a coincidence, or are there higher powers at work involved in balancing the EPO's books?

Full post as published by IPKat on June 12, 2008 (boomark / email).