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Boards of Appeal Annual Report Published

The Annual Report 2025 of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office has been made available.

The report shows that in line with previous years, appeals of oppositions lead to a different outcome than the first instance proceedings in more than 60% of cases (“Appeal successful in whole or in part”):

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Inter partes cases settled by a decision on the merits

The number of pending cases continues to decrease, along with the backlog of cases:

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Number of pending cases by technical field
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Backlog cases (= pending cases over 24 months)

Videoconference remains the most used format for proceedings:

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Oral Proceedings

Finally, 2025 also saw a decrease in the number of Petitions for Review:

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Proceedings before the Enlarged Board of Appeal

The Board of Appeal announcement on the report can be found here
The full report and all available statistics can be found here