Zusammenfassung von Article 056 EPC für die Entscheidung T2010/22 vom 18.02.2025

In T 2010/22, the opposed patent concerned a headphone. It aimed at providing a headphone that does not completely shield the wearer off from the outside acoustic environment (referred to by the appellant as an "open headphone"). Given that the appealed decision only concerned novelty in relation to claim 1 of the main request, the board conducted its own inventive-step analysis. The technical problem as formulated by the parties could not, according to the board actually be derived from effects directly and causally related to the technical features of the claimed invention. The technical problem as formulated by the opponent relied on the implicit assumption that the closer "high-frequency driver" position as per feature (d1) directly translated to a closer acoustic source as perceived by the user’s ear. This assumption was reasonable in a basic, direct-radiating open headphone, but this was not explicitly required by claim 1. In relation to the technical problem as formulated by the appellant, the board found that none of the other features specifically concerned an open headphone, contrary to the proprietor’s allegations. The proprietor claimed that some limitations that both drivers are located "off of the ear" of the user necessitated an open arrangement. While the board acknowledged that it was a plausible understanding that there may be an open arrangement, it was not the only one that was technically sound. The skilled reader would in particular be aware that the phrase "off of the ear" did not necessarily exclude the presence of circumaural or supra-aural earcups. The board wished to clarify that the derivability of a credible technical effect (for the purposes of assessing inventive step) from the original description may, if at all, only be seen as a necessary requirement but not a sufficient one in view of e.g. G 1/19, point 124 of the Reasons (in particular the sentence: "[...] only those technical effects that are at least implied in the claims should be considered in the assessment of inventive step"). This means that the conclusions of G 2/21 cannot be used to bypass the fundamental requirement that the claimed features must credibly achieve the asserted technical effect: the decisive question remains whether the claimed features themselves, as understood by the skilled person, credibly bring about the technical effect over the entire scope claimed. The board found it difficult to discern a technical effect which feature (d1) would credibly achieve over the whole scope claimed. As indicated by the board during the oral proceedings before it, this feature provided, at most, a practical arrangement of the high- and low-frequency acoustic drivers in terms of their relative positions. This meant however that the objective technical problem could, at best, be formulated as "how to practically arrange the high- and low-frequency acoustic drivers in the 'alternate embodiment' of D1 in terms of their relative positions". After its assessment of obviousness, the board concluded that the claims lacked inventive step.