Translation of "Abandoned patent" in German

The background for this assessment is Abbvie's approach of maintaining the scope of protection of patent 656 by means of a so-called fourth divisional application, which essentially claimed the same subject-matter as patent 656, but at the same time Abbvie actively abandoned patent 656 in November 2015 – only a few weeks before the start of the proceedings before the UK court.

To his knowledge, Mr W. had not previously acted in abandoning patent applications without the prior approval of the appellants' proper manager.

If, instead, the proprietor of the patent declares to the EPO that he surrenders/abandons/renounces the patent, the EPO will interpret this as a request for revocation of the patent.

In the present case, the statement "We herewith abandon the above patent" was sent by the Respondent to the Board of Appeal during the appeal stage of opposition proceedings in which the Appellant had previously requested revocation of the patent.

The declaration made in your letter of 23 January 1985 (received on 26 January 1985) by means of which you announced that your "client has decided to abandon this European patent application" must be regarded as a clear and unequivocal declaration of withdrawal, having immediate legal effect from the date of the declaration."

In a letter dated 12 January 1987 quoting the number of the appeal, the representative of the Respondent stated: "We herewith abandon the above patent".

The instructions to abandon the European patent had been given by Mr W., the appellants' in-house attorney responsible for the handling of this case.

The European authorised representative had not forwarded to the appellants either the decision on revocation or further information from the EPO on the basis of the instructions, which later turned out to be wrong, to abandon the European patent and not to incur any further costs.

Whereas, in the grant procedure, there was a clear basis for the deemed withdrawal of an application, no such possibility existed with oppositions because the patent proprietor was unable to abandon his granted patent by making a declaration to the EPO.

To allow the patent proprietors to abandon the granted patent, but continue with some of the same claims in the present application would simply lengthen the time until a final decision is reached and involve more instances of the EPO.

The appellants' allegation that Mr W. did not have the authority to abandon the patent cannot have the legal consequence that his instructions to the authorised representative via the US representative were irrelevant and thus not binding.

Further, revocation of a patent for mere failure to reply to a communication was contrary to the clear intention of the law, which required a proprietor to agree to the form in which a patent was granted or amended and to use clear and unambiguous words if he wished to abandon a patent.

Rather, Mr W. was expected not to abandon the patent without the instruction or the approval of his corporate manager.

A request under Rule 88 EPC for correction of the mistake was filed simultaneously with the grounds of appeal, with enclosures showing that the proprietor's true intention was not to abandon the patent entirely, but only for some of the designated states (see Enclosures 1, 2 and 6).

The statement "We herewith abandon the above patent" sent to the Board of Appeal by the patent proprietor during the appeal stage of an opposition, is in this case equivalent to a request that the patent be revoked.

A notice of abandonment of the patent was held to be tantamount to withdrawing the appeal in T 1003/01.

In T 29/96 the respondent informed the board and appellant, four working days before the date set for oral proceedings, that it was abandoning the patent and no longer requesting oral proceedings.

Mr W., however, had no authority to take this decision himself, but only in accordance with the decisions of the appellants' Director of Chemical Products, who had decided to abandon the patent for Germany only.

The cooperation between two companies also makes it easier and more efficient to abandon patents that are no longer needed and to develop new product lines or applications.

It was highly improbable, however, that a patent proprietor would decide to abandon his patent just after successfully negotiating his way through the examination, opposition and appeals procedure - although the opponents would no doubt welcome his doing so, which he might if he had been impressed by the grounds given for the appeal.