T 1775/23 (Service Request/KPN) 08-10-2025

The application

2. The application relates to provisioning services in a cloud environment. It addresses problems caused by the fact that it is difficult to predict how much a certain service will be used (see bottom of page 1). To avoid wasting resources by over provisioning, or delays in providing the service by under provisioning (see top of page 2), the application proposes to instantiate the needed service function chains on demand, i.e. when and if the user needs it (see bottom of page 9).

Request for remittal

3. The Examining Division refused the main request for lack of novelty of the subject-matter of claim 1 in view of D3. The Examining Division and the Appellant disagreed on claim interpretation, in particular of features 1.1, 1.2 and 1.7 (see decision at 18.2.1, see statement of grounds of appeal bottom of page 2 and page 3).

4. The Appellant requested remittal because it was clear that the Examining Division had used claim interpretation principles which were not, or at least no longer, correct in view of G 1/24, which decided that the description and drawings should always be consulted for claim interpretation. The Appellant referred to the minutes of the oral proceedings before the Examining Division at point 5.12 and to the appealed decision at point 18.2.1, where it was made clear that the Examining Division interpreted the claims "on their own".

4.1 The case should hence be remitted for reconsideration by the Examining Division in view of G 1/24.

5. The Board notes that a decision to remit lies within the discretion of the Board (Article 111(1) EPC).

In the present case, the Board already delved into the matter of claim interpretation before the oral proceedings in its preliminary opinion (see points 4 to 12 of its communication pursuant to Article 15(1) RPBA). The Appellant reacted thereto with its letter dated 4 September 2025.

6. In view of this, the Board did not consider claim interpretation following G 1/24 a special reason in the meaning of Article 11, first sentence, RPBA for remitting the case to the Examining Division. According to that provision, the Board shall not remit a case to the department whose decision was appealed for further prosecution, unless special reasons present themselves for doing so. Consequently, the Board decided to exercise the power of the Examining Division in order to rule on the matter of claim interpretation, as well as on any (already raised) issues depending on claim interpretation, such as clarity (see G 1/24 reasons 17) or novelty.

Main request: claim interpretation and clarity

7. The Examining Division found (see in particular points 14.2.1, 15.1.1, 18.2 and 18.2.1) that the wording of claim 1 was very broad, and that the claim could be interpreted to define a method for provisioning a service upon a request for deployment for the user. In particular:

(a) in feature 1.1, without any specification of further details or of the technical means performing the intercepting, intercepting could be read as merely receiving;

(b) in the same feature, the expression "a request that points to the service" only meant that the service was identified in the http request;

(c) also, in feature 1.7 the redirection was implicit for any data packets sent to the requested service, after the service was deployed.

8. The Board indicated in its communication of 3 July 2025 (points 10 and 11) that it was of the provisional opinion that, in fact, the claims were not clear (Article 84 EPC). A clear claim interpretation was not possible.

9. The Appellant was of the view that the claim was clear, and the claim terms should be interpreted in accordance with the description, also in view of G 1/24.

9.1 When doing so, one arrived at the conclusion that the claim terms defined that "the at least one network function for a service is instantiated at the time a user device sends an http request that points to the service, i.e. actually tries to use the service" (as summarised in the statement of grounds of appeal, third paragraph on page 9).

9.2 In response to the communication of the Board and during the oral proceedings the Appellant explained with reference to the description (page 4,lines 26 to 30, page 10, lines 12 to 17) that the term intercepting was different from receiving. It implied that data packets sent for processing to a service were read, and a service identifier was extracted therefrom. A corresponding service request was then generated and sent to the service node, informing the latter of the need for that service.

9.3 The service node determined (feature 1.4) which functions were necessary for the service to be provided, and whether they were already deployed and could meet the demand, or whether new service functions needed to be instantiated. The creation of new service functions was performed on demand, conditional upon the need. This was implicit in the term "determining" read in view of the description (page 13, lines 1 to 10).

9.4 Afterwards, the data packets to be processed were redirected accordingly, to the network functions providing the desired service (page 13, lines 15 to 19).

The Board's opinion

10. The Board notes first that claim 1 nowhere defines the nature of the request explicitly.

10.1 The term "request .. that points to a service" (feature 1.1) is ambiguous and may indeed, as the Examining Division stated, be read to define a request that identifies a service that is desired, so a request for deployment.

10.2 This reading would be consistent with the fact that the data packets (defined in feature 1.7) are only "associated with" the request, so they can be provided later, after the service is established. In this context redirection simply means, as usual, that a receiving node on the cloud providing the service redirects them on a routing path to the appropriate virtual devices.

10.3 The term determining, on which the Appellant relies to define a conditionality for provisioning services only when needed, merely defines, in the context of the claim as drafted, that the service node determines which functions are needed to provide the desired services (feature 1.5), and then instantiates them (feature 1.6), without any implied conditionality.

11. The term intercepting in feature 1.1 is indeed different from receiving, as the Appellant argued. But the claim does not define in what the interception consists. It does not even define the intended recipient, or the intercepting component.

11.1 If anything, this term, and only this one, raises a question mark over an otherwise straightforward interpretation (provided by the Examining Division) of the claim wording, as one for a method of deploying a service upon a request for deployment of that service from a user.

12. The description itself may indeed be said to support, generally, the interpretation of the Appellant. But even the description remains ambiguous. The Appellant did not provide passages with clear definitions, and the Board does not see any either, of e.g. the term request that points to a service, or of the term intercepting, or of the term determining, to mean what the Appellant apparently intends them to mean. This intended meaning can only be gleaned, in the Board's view not unambiguously, or at least not exclusively, from the text of the application.

13. Even if the description were clear about the intended meaning of the terms, the Board notes that the relatively large discrepancy between the straightforward interpretation of the wording of the claim (on its own), and the apparent intended meaning would already be a problem of clarity.

13.1 It is the Applicant/Appellant which chooses the wording of the claim, and it is reasonable to think that the Applicant may aim for a broad scope of protection. Thus, if the wording of the claim allows for different, broader interpretations, then the question arises whether matter covered by such broader interpretations is protected or not - which is an issue of clarity (see also T 3097/19, reasons 30 to 32).

13.2 G 1/24 states (reasons point 18) that the description and drawings are always referred to when interpreting the claims. But this does not mean that in all cases definitions or meanings of the terms that may be implied by the description must necessarily be adopted (see also decision T 1561/23 from the present board in a different composition, reasons 2.10). Instead, the assessment will depend on the circumstances of the case at hand.

13.3 Furthermore, as also stated in G 1/24 (reasons 20), the correct answer to an objection of lack of clarity is, in examination, amendment, in order to remove any ambiguities as to what the intended protection may be.

14. It follows from the above that the act of interpretation does not lead to a clear understanding as to for which matter protection is sought (see G1/24 reasons 17). The Board concludes that claim 1 of the main request lacks clarity (Article 84 EPC).

Auxiliary requests

15. All auxiliary requests were filed by the Appellant after the communication of the Board under Article 15(1) RPBA. Their admittance is therefore subject to the provisions of Article 13 RPBA.

16. The Appellant argued that the Board raised a new objection in its communication, that of lack of clarity, and this would provide exceptional circumstances as required by Article 13(2) RPBA.

17. The Board is not convinced by this argument, because the objection of lack of clarity was a direct consequence of the dispute on claim interpretation which was already part of the decision under appeal (see above point 3).

18. Be that as it may, the Board notes that none of these requests appears to address in a suitable manner the objections above (points 10 to 14).

18.1 In particular, the conditionality of the provisioning - which the Appellant saw in the term "determining" (see points 9.3 and 10.3 above) is not clearly defined in any of these requests.

18.2 The addition of the term "new" in the third auxiliary request was meant to address this issue. The Appellant referred to the description page 13, lines 1 to 10, to explain that a new service function was instantiated only if necessary - so conditionality was implied by the term "new".

18.3 The addition is in the Board's view clearly insufficient to address the objection. That is because even if the instantiation of the service function is not conditional, as per the interpretation of the Examining Division, it will still be a "new" service function. So the tension in claim interpretation remains.

19. The Board decides therefore not to admit auxiliary requests 1 to 3 into the appeal proceedings pursuant to Article 13(1) RPBA.