A Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office decides about requests filed in the oral hearing

In a decision of September 26, 2014 (T 1888/11) a Board of Appeal had to decide about requests which have not been filed earlier than in the Oral Hearing. The patentee has made an attempt with these requests to overcome objections due to undue broadening. The objection of undue broadening was not entirely new in the proceeding. However, the Board of Appeal shared the view of the patentee, that in fact only during the oral hearing a number of features have been objected specifically under the aspect of undue broadening, namely an intermediate generalization. Despite the late filing, the Board of Appeal did not reject these requests under the timing aspect. However, the requests were rejected because they themselves contained undue broadening.