R2396/2019-3

• ›The applicant appealed the rejection of his restitutio in integrum request, arguing that his representative had exercised all due care by sending a timely reply to the deficiency notice via standard airmail on 22 January 2019 (three weeks before the deadline) and that the non-delivery was due to an unforeseeable failure of the postal service.
• ›The examiner had rejected the restitutio request on the basis that other means of communication (such as fax) were available to the representative, that letters sent by normal mail cannot be tracked, and that the representative had failed to take all care required by the circumstances.
• ›The Board found that the representative breached his own firm's procedures for despatching letters by sending the reply personally without making any entry in the outgoing mail log, and that he failed to explain why he did not wait until the next day to send the letter via the normal secretarial procedure; no adequate evidence that the letter was actually sent was provided.
• ›The Board concluded that all due care required by the circumstances had not been demonstrated and therefore the conditions of Article 67(1) CDR were not met; the appeal was dismissed.

• ChairTh. M. Margellos
• MemberE. Fink
• MemberH. Salmi
• Registrarp.o. M. Chaleva

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