The Annual Report 2022 of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office was made available earlier today.
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”):
The number of new opposition appeal cases saw another notable rise (38%). 25 Petitions for Review were filed in 2022, a 67% increase from the previous year:
The number of opposition appeal cases pending sees a 7.5% decrease:
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):
Finally, the figures also show that 71% of appeal hearings were held by videoconference in 2022:
The Board of Appeal announcement on the report can be found here
The full report and all available statistics can be found here
