E. Modifications

In T 1052/23 the board explained that an amended claim the wording of which was not literally included in the (earlier) application as originally filed, as in the case in hand, must generally be interpreted by using a mind willing to understand and by consulting the description and the drawings, prior to assessing whether the claimed subject-matter can be directly and unambiguously derived from the (earlier) application as filed. The board agreed with the two-step approach applied in T 2048/22 and T 873/23.

The board did not agree with the patent proprietor's narrower interpretation of claim 1, according to which a "selection" or "switching" step between two types of shapes of the printing features of the same printing plate was included. The board observed that, as held by many boards following G 1/24, the consultation of the description did not mean that restrictive features that were contained in specific embodiments in the description could limit the wording of the claims, see for example T 1232/23, T 1465/23, T 1846/23, T 1069/23, T 1351/23, T 412/24, T 2034/23 and T 1402/24. The board was of the view that also the more general statement in paragraph [0008] of the patent relating to the background of the invention and merely pointing to an advantageous method and apparatus would not prompt the skilled person to a narrower interpretation of claim 1.

The board consulted the description when interpreting claim 1 and interpreted it in a broad, technically reasonable manner. According to the board’s interpretation, claim 1 did not include the aspect of controlling the top shapes of the printing features on a same printing plate by selecting the first or second illumination intensity, so that the claim was not restricted accordingly. Omitting this essential aspect, which was included in the relevant independent claims of the parent application and presented throughout its description as a core feature of the invention, led to a broadening of the claim which therefore encompassed subject-matter that was not originally disclosed in the parent application as originally filed. Consequently, the omission amounted to an unallowable amendment and to an extension beyond the content of the parent application as filed.

With respect to dependent claims 5 and 6, the board was of the view that the features of said dependent claims were not disclosed in the claims of the parent application as originally filed. They were taken from the description, but from a specific technical context. Claim 5 and 6 as granted constituted unallowable intermediate generalisations of specific examples provided in the parent application as originally filed.

Therefore, the board concluded that the subject-matter of claims 1, 5 and 6 extended beyond the content of the earlier application as filed so that the ground for opposition under Art. 100(c) EPC prejudiced the maintenance of the opposed patent as granted.

In T 439/22 of 11 December 2025 the board applied the conclusions of the Enlarged Board in G 1/24 to interpret the term "gathered sheet" in claim 1 of the referring case.

The board held that in interpreting the language used in a claim, "consulting", "referring to", "using" and "taking into account" the description and figures are synonyms for the act of deriving the necessary information from the patent as a whole to understand which meaning a person skilled in the art would attribute to the terms used in the claim.

Furthermore, the board stated that claim interpretation was the result of both reading the claims and consulting the description and drawings as a unitary process. It explained that this holistic approach followed from the Order of the Enlarged Board, according to which, if, on the one hand the claims are the starting point and the basis for assessing the patentability of an invention under Art. 52 to 57 EPC, the interpretation of the claims requires, on the other hand, that "the description and drawings shall always be consulted when assessing the patentability of an invention under Art. 52 to 57 EPC". Moreover, this was confirmed in point 17 of G 1/24, which provides that "the finding that the language of a claim is clear and unambiguous is an act of interpretation, not a preliminary stage to such an interpretative act"..

The board was of the view that a skilled person aiming to correctly determine the subject-matter for which protection was sought and reading the patent specification with a mind willing to understand would attribute considerable weight to any definition of a term used in the claims. Having cross-checked that the claim in itself and in the context of the other claims made technical sense and was in line with the information presented in other passages of the description, the person skilled in the art would have no reason to disregard such definitions and to give the defined terms a different meaning in the claim. In the case in hand the definition of "gathered" given in paragraph [0035] did not contradict but rather encompassed the commonly accepted meaning of the term "gathered sheet", namely a sheet that is folded and convoluted to occupy a three-dimensional space. The definition was simply not restricted to folded sheets but included other forms of transverse constrictions of the extension of a sheet. The board concluded that the wound tobacco sheet of D1 equated to the "gathered sheet" feature of claim 1 when this term was correctly interpreted according to paragraph [0035] of the description. Hence, the subject-matter of claim 1 of the main request lacked novelty over the content of document D1.

The sole amendment in the auxiliary request was the deletion of paragraph [0035] from the description of the contested patent, which read as follows: "As used herein, the term 'gathered' denotes that the sheet of tobacco material is convoluted, folded, or otherwise compressed or constricted substantially transversely to the cylindrical axis of the rod". The appellant submitted that said deletion altered the interpretation of the term "gathered sheet" in claim 1 and, consequently, the scope of the protection conferred. In the absence of the broader definition provided in paragraph [0035], the term "gathered sheet" no longer encompassed other limiting features, namely that the gathered tobacco sheet was "compressed or constricted substantially transversely to the cylindrical axis of the rod".

The board noted that, in line with the Enlarged Board's holistic approach to claim interpretation in G 1/24, a person skilled in the art reading the claim in the context of the description and figures would try to take a definition found in the description at face value. As long as the definition was technically reasonable and complied with the overall teaching expressed in the claims, description and figures, the skilled person would read the terms in the claim in the sense of the definition, taking into account both the broadening and limiting aspects found in that definition. It was therefore not permissible to consider only the broadening aspects contained in a definition and disregard any limiting aspects. As set out by the Enlarged Board in G 1/24, point 20 of the Reasons, Art. 84 EPC may require that limiting or broadening aspects are expressed in the claim to avoid any unclarity, but a granted claim had to be read in light of all aspects of a definition found in the description. Therefore, the board concluded that the auxiliary request did not comply with the requirement of Art. 123(3) EPC.

In T 195/23 was an appeal against the interlocutory decision of the opposition division concerning the maintenance of the patent in amended form. The opponents disputed the decision's finding that the priority claim was valid. In particular, they challenged the validity of the priority claim for the alternative "wherein the smoke modifying additive is disposed only in said axial region of the filter material of the first filter section" in the feature directed to the location of the smoke modifying article in claim 1 of auxiliary request 3.

The board concurred with the proprietor that the drawings in the priority document were specifically intended to show the location of the smoke modifying additive. In fact, figures 1-5 of the priority document depicted various types of additive located in the central region of a filter section. For example, in figures 1 and 4, a capsule was located in an axial region of a first filter section. In figures 2 and 5, the absorbent material had an additive carrying thread disposed therein in an axial region. In figure 3, the absorbent material 47 had a plurality of microcapsules disposed therein in an axial region thereof. However, none of these passages contained a statement to the effect that the depicted smoke modifying additive was the only additive in the filter. In the board's view, these drawings therefore could only serve as a basis for a positive feature directed to the presence of such additive in a central region of the filter. Such a positive feature did not rule out the presence of some further, non-depicted additive in another region of the filter.

In contrast, the board construed the feature "only in the axial region" as a negative feature which was directed to the absence of any smoke modifying additive from other regions of the filter, e.g. its peripheral region. The board referred to established jurisprudence (see CLB, II.E.1.13.3, 10th edition) according to which, a negative feature, i.e. the absence of not depicted elements, usually cannot be derived from drawings. This was aggravated in the present case by the disclosure in the priority document, which explicitly stated that there could be additive – though at a lower concentration – in non-axial regions of the filter. In light of this explicit disclosure in the priority document, which did not contradict the drawings and the corresponding explanations to the drawings in the description, the board was not convinced by the respondent's argument that the skilled person would interpret the drawings as such, rather than entertaining the notion that they did not illustrate some smoke modifying additive. As a consequence, the board did not consider the feature directed to the smoke modifying additive being disposed only in the axial region of the first filter section to be an implicit feature of the priority document.

The board concluded that the application underlying the patent in suit was not filed in respect of the same invention for the alternative "wherein the smoke modifying additive is disposed only in said axial region of the filter material of the first filter section" of claim 1 of auxiliary request 3, and thus, the patent proprietor should not enjoy a right of priority for this alternative..

The above conclusions also applied to independent claim 1 of auxiliary requests 5 to 18, which also contained the alternative "wherein the smoke modifying additive is disposed only in said axial region of the filter material of the first filter section".