T 1971/16 - Party as of right's objections disregarded

Key points

•  The patentee and opponent 2 both appeal. Opponent 1 does not appeal.
• Auxiliary request 2 is the set of claims allowed by the OD.
• Opponent 1 as respondent had submitted objections to AR-2 with its reply to the appeal.
• The Board does not admit these objections: "As was also not disputed by the parties, Opponent 1, as respondent, may request that the patent proprietor's appeal be dismissed, but may no longer challenge the maintenance of the patent as amended according to the interlocutory decision (auxiliary request 2). For this reason, the objections and arguments directed against the maintained version are considered inadmissible and are therefore not taken into account in the appeal proceedings."
• The Board then considers the objections of opponent 2 and does not find them to be convincing.
  
  
• As a comment, I don't recall having seen this approach before where objections are personal in the sense that an opponent may rely only on its own objections. 
• cf. T 1675/14 for the first instance proceedings.
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EPO 

The link to the decision is provided after the jump, as well as (an extract of) the text of the decision.

source http://justpatentlaw.blogspot.com/2022/09/t-197116-party-as-of-rights-objections.html