The broadening of the scope of claim 1 requested by the applicant after receipt of the Examining Division's communication under Rule 51(4) EPC so as to encompass one originally disclosed embodiment was not consistent with his previous submission that said embodiment was not part of the invention, raised new issues as to clarity and inventive step and was not supported by any argumentation in favour of the allowability of the amendment claim: the Examining Division in refusing to consent to the amendment under Rule 86(3) EPC was not considered in the circumstances to have exercised its discretion in a wrong or unreasonable manner.

The Board gave its consent to an amendment consisting essentially in the addition of a single independent claim specifically directed to said originally disclosed embodiment, filed together with a detailed and convincing argumentation in favour of inventive step in view of the citations in the Search Report.