The Annual Report 2023 of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office was made available earlier today.
One of the main focuses of the Report is ‘timeliness’. Unlike previous reports, there is no detailed breakdown of outcomes and in which technologies.
Bucking the trend of increasing number of Opposition Appeals (technical) between 2020 and 2022, last year saw a decrease:
2023 also saw the Enlarged Board of Appeal give a decision on three referrals (G2/21, G1/22 and G2/22). There was also a decrease in the number of Petitions for Review compared to the previous year, and an increase in the number settled:
Like last year, the Report does not give figures for the mean duration of appeal proceedings. Rather, they rely on showing figures for completion of cases in 30 months (but without differentiation of ex parte and inter partes proceedings). As of 31 December 2023, the overall percentage of backlog cases was 13.4%:
For 2024, the Report states its objective of no more than 10% of cases in stock no being older than 24 months.
The language of proceedings is majority English, and therefore consistent over the past 5 years:
Finally, the figures also show that 57% of all Appeal hearings were held by videoconference in 2023, and only 2% in hybrid format:
The Board of Appeal announcement on the report can be found here
The full report and all available statistics can be found here
