"Early Certainty from Opposition"?
In mid-2016 the EPO introduced "Early Certainty from
Opposition", announcing that streamlined internal workflows
would apply to first-instance opposition proceedings as from 1 July
2016: see notices in the EPO Official Journal, May 2016, A42 and A43. A stated intention
was to reduce the time needed for a first-instance decision in
"straightforward" cases to 15 months from expiry of the
opposition term. Perhaps reasonably enough, no attempt was made to
define "straightforward".
Intended or possible effects of EPO-internal
"streamlining" on requirements to be made of parties to
proceedings were not particularly spelled out in the May 2016
notices. They indicated that the term to be set for the patentee to
respond to the notice(s) of opposition would be 4 months,
extendible only in exceptional cases, as was previously so (see
e.g. Rule 132 EPC). In the
November 2016 version of the Guidelines for Examination at the EPO,
a passage was
