T 0129/88 (Fibre) du 10.02.1992

1. Although the European Patent Office has an obligation under Article 114(1) EPC to investigate matters of its own motion, that obligation does not extend as far as investigating an allegation of prior public use, where the party who formerly made that allegation has withdrawn from the proceedings, and it is difficult to establish all the relevant facts without his cooperation.

2. The inclusion in claims of features expressed in terms of having desirable properties in excess of a given lower limit is not inherently objectionable. In particular the scope of a claim may be adequately defined if the number of parameters so expressed has the effect of imposing practical upper limits having regard to the totality of features expressed in the claim (T 487/89 of 17 July 1991 - not published in OJ EPO - followed).

3. The incluslion in a product claim of one or more process features may be permissible if their presence is desirable having regard to the impact of the national laws of one or more Contacting States. (T 150/82, OJ EPO 1984, 309 explained and applied).