| European Case Law Identifier: | ECLI:EP:BA:1990:T051689.19901219 | ||||||||
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| Date of decision: | 19 December 1990 | ||||||||
| Case number: | T 0516/89 | ||||||||
| Application number: | 81300980.0 | ||||||||
| IPC class: | C08J 9/10 | ||||||||
| Language of proceedings: | EN | ||||||||
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| Title of application: | - | ||||||||
| Applicant name: | Schering | ||||||||
| Opponent name: | Bayer | ||||||||
| Board: | 3.3.02 | ||||||||
| Headnote: | Papers marked "confidential" which do not belong to classes of documents to be excluded from file inspection (Rule 93 EPC; decision of the President of the EPO, OJ EPO 1985, 316) are returned to the party concerned, without taking note of their contents. | ||||||||
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| Keywords: | Confidential papers - documents excluded from file inspection | ||||||||
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Summary of Facts and Submissions
I. European patent No. 37 188 was granted on the basis of eight claims in response to European patent application No. 81 300 980.0. ...
II. ...
III. The Opposition Division revoked the patent by a written decision posted on 23 June 1989. In its decision it held that the comparative experiments submitted on 22 July 1987 by the Respondents demonstrated that there was no difference between a blowing agent obtained according to a process of the state of the art and a blowing agent obtained according to the method of Claim 1. ...
IV. The Appellants lodged an appeal ...
V. The Grounds of Appeal were accompanied by papers marked 'CONFIDENTIAL' and in the covering letter the Appellants requested the EPO to treat these documents as such. With two letters the registrar of the Board made inquiries whether these papers should be returned to the Appellants or should be transmitted to the Respondents. In reply, on 27 December 1989 the Appellants requested the President of the European Patent Office to order under Rule 93(d) EPC that the respective documents should be excluded from public file inspection. The Board passed this request to the President of the EPO who decided that the respective papers could not be excluded from file inspection in accordance with Rule 93(d) EPC. They neither fell under one of the alternatives (a) to (c) of Rule 93 EPC nor did they belong to the classes of documents designated in the President's decision dated 16 September 1985 (OJ EPO 1985, 316). They could also not be excluded from inspection of the file by a decision in this particular case as they were filed to prove, according to the Appellants, the commercial success of the invention and, thus, to support inventive step. Therefore, such information could serve the purpose of informing the public of the European patent and, hence, could not be exempted from inspection of the file. After this decision of the President of the EPO the Board returned the documents marked 'CONFIDENTIAL' to the Appellants, informing them inter alia that no member of the Board had taken note of these documents. ...
(No Reasons for the Decision)
(No Order)
