"[...] A fifth Board of Appeal, chaired by President of the Boards, Paul Maier, has been set up in order to deal with the growing workload.
The initiative is in response to the increased volume of applications received by the Office, combined with efforts to reduce timescales. This year the Boards of Appeal expect to deal with around 2,000 cases - over 20% more than in 2006.
'As backlogs are eliminated at the examination, opposition and cancellation stages, the number of appeals we deal with inevitably rises, even though the rates of appeal against Office decisions have remained quite stable, and have even gone down slightly for oppositions,' says Maier. [...]"
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