Thursday 19 December 2013

T 1939/11 – Liquidation


This opposition appeal contains an interesting passage on the party status of the opponents.

[2] An appeal was filed by the joint opponents DF3 SAS and Cosucra Groupe Warcoing. The respondent requested that a decision on the party status of DF3 SAS be taken.

As is shown by D68, a copy of a judgement of the Tribunal de Commerce d’Amiens, insolvency proceedings (procédure de Liquidation Judiciare [sic] Normale) were opened against DF3 SAS. According to D68, these proceedings have been pending until 25 October 2013, ie until after the oral proceedings before the present board and until after the decision announced therein.

An action taken against the property of an opponent, here une procédure de Liquidation Judiciare [re-sic] Normale under French law against DF3 SAS, does not take away the opponent’s party status (T 696/02 [7.2]) and does not entail an interruption of the proceedings, R 142 covering applicants or patent proprietors only.

Therefore DF3 SAS could validly claim the status of an appellant until the announcement of the present decision.

I have presented another decision dealing with insolvency some years ago (here).

Should you wish to download the whole decision, just click here.

The file wrapper can be found here.

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