Selected decisions of the Boards of Appeal

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Application no.

Headnote

I. Evidence submitted by a patent applicant or proprietor to prove a technical effect relied upon for acknowledgement of inventive step of the claimed subject-matter may not be disregarded solely on the ground that such evidence, on which the effect rests, had not been public before the filing date of the patent in suit and was filed after that date.
II. A patent applicant or proprietor may rely upon a technical effect for inventive step if the skilled person, having the common general knowledge in mind, and based on the application as originally filed, would derive said effect as being encompassed by the technical teaching and embodied by the same originally disclosed inventionFor that assessment it is not a sufficient condition that the simulation is based, in whole or in part, on technical principles underlying the simulated system or process.

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Application no.

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Complementing automatisation with human intervention. Providing means enabling a skilled artisan to actively intervene in an automated process and provide a backup to pre-programmed procedures - Obvious measures - (yes)
(Points 2.19 to 2.33)

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Application no.

Catchword

Prima facie allowability under Article 123(2) EPC of a late-filed amended claim request may be a valid criterion to be used by the opposition division when deciding on the admittance of this claim request. However, using this criterion, to object for the first time at oral proceedings to a feature of the late-filed claim request that was already present in higher-ranking claim requests and had never been objected to before, not even when deciding on the allowability or admittance of those higher-ranking claim requests, goes against the principles of fairness and good faith (see point 2.6.11 of the reasons).

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Application no.

Catchword

1. The provisions in Article 84 EPC and Rules 42 and 43 EPC provide an adequate legal basis for claim interpretation when assessing patentability. In particular, the requirement that the claims shall be "supported by the description" in Article 84 EPC, 2nd sentence, indicates that the description may be relied upon as an aid or support for understanding the subject-matter of the claims.
2. However, as implicitly derivable from this provision, the support of the description for interpreting the claims should only be resorted to in the exceptional cases where the subject-matter of the invention and/or its technical context needs to be clarified, and may only be applicable when the invention in the description corresponds to the invention as claimed.
3. The support of the description should, in any case, not be used for restricting or modifying the subject-matter of the invention beyond what a person skilled in the art would understand when reading the wording of the claims within the relevant technical context.

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Application no.

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Gründe 5.1, 6, 7

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Application no.

Catchword

No technical effect of the distinguishing features over the disclosure of document D1 can be derived over the whole scope of claim 1 (see decision G 1/19 of 10 March 2021, sections 82 and 95).

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Application no.

Catchword

1. Pursuant to Article 15a(1) RPBA 2021 the boards have a discretionary power to hold oral proceedings by videoconference without the consent of all parties. When exercising this discretion, the board must primarily assess whether the case is suitable to be dealt with by videoconference and/or whether there are reasons that require holding oral proceedings in person. Such reasons may be seen in the complexity of the case or a need to inspect models.
2. Holding oral proceedings by videoconference can meanwhile be often considered an equivalent alternative to oral proceedings in person because the boards and the parties have gained such extensive experience with videoconferencing and using the tools involved since G1/21. Holding oral proceedings by videoconference is hence no longer that disadvantageous as it was when the decision G1/21 was issued.

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Application no.

Catchword

Once the public is officially informed by an EPO publication of an explicit declaration of withdrawal and without any indication that this declaration might have been erroneous, there is no room for a further balancing of the interests of the general public and the applicant (confirming the settled case law of the boards of appeal, see Reasons 2.2 to 2.13).

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Application no.

Catchword

1. From the company name of an appellant alone it can generally not be derived that the appellant does not meet the conditions of Rule 6(4,5) EPC in conjunction with European Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC of 6 May 2003 for payment of the reduced appeal fee. This applies even where a company name is well-known.
2. Where it is not clear from the file at the end of the appeal period whether or not an appellant at the point in time of payment of the reduced fee meets the conditions of Rule 6(4,5) EPC, no clear intention to pay the regular appeal fee can be detected that under the principles of T 152/82 would entitle the EPO to ex officio debit the amount of the regular fee.
3. An appellant who gives a debit order for payment of the reduced appeal fee even though it clearly does not meet the conditions of Rule 6(4,5) EPC commits an obvious mistake in the meaning of J 8/80 and G 1/12. Such an appellant is imputed to have had the clear intention to pay the regular fee, reason why no evidence to prove this intention is required.
4. The exhaustive criteria to assess Rule 139 EPC are "principles" (a) to (c) of G 1/12, i.e. essentially those of J 8/80, points 4 and 6:
(a) The correction must introduce what was originally intended.
(b) Where the original intention is not immediately apparent, the requester bears the burden of proof, which must be a heavy one. The same applies, pursuant to J 8/80, point 6, where the making of the mistake is not self-evident.
(c) The error to be remedied may be an incorrect statement or an omission.
complemented by criterion
(d) balancing of the public interest in legal certainty with the interest of the party requesting correction, with the factors (i.e. sub-criteria of this criterion) relevant to the specific case.
As a rule, criteria (a) to (d) are to be assessed in the order (c), (a), if applicable, together with (b), and (d).

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Application no.

Catchword

Reasons 3.6. In claimed inventions that do not involve a range of parameter values or compositions but are directed at a concept expressed in terms of generic structural or functional features of an apparatus or of a method, it is not enough to demonstrate insufficiency to conceive of an example that falls within the terms of the claim that does not work because it does not achieve the claimed effect fully or at all so that therefore the invention would not be sufficiently disclosed across the entire breadth of the claim

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Application no.

Catchword

1. The issue of which standard of disclosure applies when assessing the legal question of novelty and the issue of which standard of proof applies when assessing evidence and factual questions are distinct and unrelated. The fact that the standard of disclosure required for a finding of lack of novelty (or for allowing an amendment to the application under Article 123(2) EPC) is the standard of a direct and unambiguous disclosure is immaterial for the question of what standard of proof applies when considering evidence and factual issues in the context of novelty (or inventive step) (see point 16).
2. The standard of proof generally applied at the EPO for deciding on an issue of fact is the balance of probabilities. According to this standard, the EPO must base its decisions on statements of fact which, based on the available evidence, are more likely than not to be true. This standard also applies when examining factual issues in the context of novelty (see point 14).

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In view of the principles of multiple priorities and partial priority: undisclosed disclaimer based on a disclosure in an earlier application by the same applicant not allowed

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Eligibility requirements for paying a reduced appeal fee by an appellant - opponent in case of opposition filed as a straw man (Reasons 1 to 9.2).

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Application no.

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The mere change, by an operator, of the degree of abstraction of a graphical view ("condensation") of a power grid does not credibly assist a user in performing a technical task by means of a continued and/or guided human-machine interaction process within the meaning of T 336/14 and T 1802/13 and thus cannot bring about a technical effect (see points 3.2 to 3.6 of the Reasons).

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Application no.

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If the patent proprietor introduces various differences between the definition of a certain compound in a granted claim and that in the priority application and if despite these differences, the patent proprietor, in arguing that the effective date of the subject-matter of the granted claim is the claimed priority date, asserts that the compound of the granted claim is the same as that disclosed in the priority application, it is the patent proprietor who bears the burden of proving this assertion (point 2.13 of the reasons).

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Application no.

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If the claimed non-technical features do not interact with claimed technical features such that they produce a further technical effect, for the assessment of inventive step one may
- either include the corresponding aim to be achieved in a non-technical field in the formulation of the problem as part of the framework of the technical problem that is to be solved,
- or else take the corresponding business scenario as the starting point for the problem and solution approach (see reasons 3.2.2).

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Application no.

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The clinical trials were carried out in accordance with the EMEA Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice. These guidelines explicitly require adherence to the prescribed protocol and assurance of drug accountability. This set-up of the trials implies that the patients who decided to participate in the trials agreed, following their informed consent, to use the provided medication according to instruction or to return the unused medication. Accordingly, the participating patients who were provided with the tablets under investigation entered into a special relationship with the investigators of the trials and were with regard to the provided tablets not members of the public that could freely dispose over these tablets. (see section 4.3)

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Application no.

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A neural network defines a class of mathematical functions which, as such, is excluded matter. As for other "non-technical" matter, it can therefore only be considered for the assessment of inventive step when used to solve a technical problem, e.g. when trained with specific data for a specific technical task.

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Most promising springboard toward the claimed invention too short to allow the skilled person to reach out to cited secondary document and to overcome the considerable gap separating the closest prior art from the claimed subject-matter (reasons 3.35 to 3.39)

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Whether the documents which are taken as starting points for newly raised inventive step objections were previously used for objections regarding a lack of novelty has no bearing for determining whether these inventive step objections constitute an amendment to the opponent's appeal case under Article 13(2) RPBA 2020 (Reasons 4.7).

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1.) Article 69 EPC in conjunction with Article 1 of the Protocol thereto can and should be relied on when interpreting claims and determining the claimed subject-matter in proceedings before the EPO, including for the purpose of assessing compliance with Article 123(2) EPC (Reasons 3.1-3.15).
2.) Although Article 69(1), second sentence, EPC requires that generally account be taken of the description and the drawings when interpreting a claim, the primacy of the claims according to Article 69(1), first sentence, EPC limits the extent to which the meaning of a certain claim feature may be affected by the description and the drawings (Reasons 3.16-3.16.2).
3.) Claim interpretation is overall a question of law which must as such ultimately be answered by the deciding body, and not by linguistic or technical experts. It does, however, involve the appraisal of linguistic and technical facts which may be supported by evidence submitted by the parties (Reasons 3.17).

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Application no.

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Since the initial main request, filed for the first time with the statement of grounds of appeal, would not have been admitted under Article 12(4) RPBA 2007, the objections raised by the board in the communication annexed to the summons to oral proceedings against this initial main request are of a hypothetical nature and do not establish exceptional circumstances referred to in Article 13(2) RPBA 2020 which could justify amending the applicant's appeal case.

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A similarity [of the claimed subject-matter] to a business or administrative solution is not a sufficient reason for denying a technical contribution of a claim feature applied in a technical context and involving technical considerations. Put another way, technical considerations in the technical context cannot be negated merely on the basis of a non-technical analogy.
... The analogy to a post office, essentially invoked by the contested decision, is used in technical literature in order to describe functionality of the transport layer (layer 4) of the OSI model. However, in the Board's view, it would not be sound to assert, only based on this analogy, that communication protocols implementing this layer's functionality lack technical character.
(See points 3.2.7 and 3.2.8 of the reasons).

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The principles expressed in Article 12(6) RPBA 2020 for the admittance of non-maintained or non-admitted requests may be considered in the exercise of discretion to admit amendments based on such requests under Article 12(4) RPBA 2020.

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Novelty of selection inventions - selection from a broad range - "gold standard" - see point 3.4

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The undesired phenomena observed in the patent with the use of the prior art compositions would not inevitably manifest themselves upon the practical implementation of the teaching of the prior art. The recognition of the relevance of these phenomena should therefore be considered to form part of the technical contribution described in the patent. A specific reference in the formulation of the objective technical problem to the avoidance of these phenomena risks to unfairly direct development towards the claimed solution, which is not permissible in line with the principles as developed in the established jurisprudence (see reasons section 4.2.3).

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1.) Article 114(2) EPC provides a legal basis for disregarding claim requests which are not submitted in due time (Reasons 4.5.1-4.5.11).
2.) A claim request which is filed in opposition proceedings after the date set under Rule 116(1) EPC is not submitted in due time within the meaning of Article 114(2) EPC (Reasons 4.6.1-4.6.10).
3.) Rule 116(2) EPC does not limit the Opposition Division's discretionary power under Article 114(2) EPC and Rule 116(1) EPC. As a rule, this discretionary power does not depend on the contents of the Opposition Division's communication under Rule 116(1) EPC. However, if the Opposition Division invites the patent proprietor to file an amended claim request to address a specific objection and the patent proprietor complies with this invitation by filing the required amendments by the date set under Rule 116(1) EPC, the Opposition Division's discretion not to admit that claim request may effectively be reduced to zero (Reasons 4.7.1-4.7.8).

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Application no.

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If there is an amendment to the patent in the appeal proceedings which has never been examined before, the Enlarged Board's obiter dictum in G 10/91, Reasons 19, is fully respected when only the prima facie relevance of an objection under Article 123(2) EPC is considered in the context of assessing whether there are exceptional circumstances under Article 13(2) RPBA 2020 (Reasons 2.3.1-2.3.14).

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Application no.

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siehe Punkt 5.1

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Extension of subject-matter: selection from an indication of equally preferred items (e.g. formed by several independent claims) disclosed in the application as filed (see point 2.4.1 of the Reasons)

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The appellant argued that the claimed features relating to the abstract business concept neither could have been provided by the business person to the technical expert for programming, nor would the technical expert have corresponding knowledge starting from a networked standard computer system. The appellant thereby alleged that there was to be considered an imaginary third person who came up with the concept of the invention to be implemented on a computer system. The Board notes that when assessing inventive step in the field of computer implemented business related inventions following the COMVIK approach and the corresponding case law, there is no room for such a third expert. When analysing the features of a claim and answering the question of whether they provide a technical contribution, each such feature has to be judged to be either a contribution of the technical expert or of the non-technical business person in order to conclude whether there is an inventive technical contribution. (See point 4.13 of the reasons)

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1. If a request is not admitted because earlier objections are not overcome, Rule 111(2) EPC requires that these earlier objections be made explicit in the decision (see reasons 3).
2. Non-convergence of requests is, on its own, not a sufficient reason for non-admittance. It must be reasoned that and why non-convergent requests affect procedural economy in view of the particular circumstances of the case (see reasons 4).
3. The purpose of the claims to define the matter for which protection is sought (Article 84 EPC) imparts requirements on the application as a whole, in addition to the express requirements that the claims be clear, concise and supported by the description. The Board deems it to be an elementary requirement of a patent as a legal title that its extent of protection can be determined precisely. Whether this is the case for a specific patent application (or an amended patent) can only be decided with due consideration of the description. Claims and description do not precisely define the matter for which protection is sought if they contradict each other (see reasons 27 to 34).
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Application no.

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The normal rule of claim construction of reading a feature specified in a claim in its broadest technically meaningful sense corresponds to determining the broadest scope encompassed by the subject-matter being claimed according to a technically sensible reading. In the case of a feature defined in a positive manner, which imposes the presence of a specific element, this is effectively achieved by giving to the element in question its broadest technically sensible meaning. However, for a feature defined in a negative manner, which excludes the presence of a specific element, the broadest scope of the claim corresponds to the narrowest (i.e. most limited) technically sensible definition of the element to be excluded. (Reasons, point 5.7)

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Since the problem and solution approach defines the problem based on the effect of the differences from the closest prior art, and the effect is derived primarily from the disclosure of the invention, the effect documented in the present documents alone is taken as the basis for the problem formulation. The Board concluded that any further, undocumented effects would be speculative and should not be additionally included in the problem formulation (reasons 5.3.2)

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Application no.

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The requirement that the claims are to be supported by the description under Article 84, second sentence, EPC does not necessarily mean that all the "embodiments" of the description of a patent application have to be covered by the (independent) claims, i.e. that all the embodiments must fall within the scope of those claims (see point 6.2.2 of the Reasons).

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Application no.

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If the only feature that distinguishes a claim from the closest prior art is a range of an unusual parameter and it is concluded that it would be obvious for the skilled person to solve the underlying technical problem in ways that can be presumed to inherently lead to values within or close to the claimed range, it is the proprietor who should bear the burden of proof to demonstrate that implementing such solutions would not lead to the claimed parametrical range.

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Application no.

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In the Board's judgement it is part of the non-technical requirement specification to keep keys (be it analog or electronic keys) away from people one does not trust. This does not require technical considerations of a technically skilled person. The Board does not consider this to be a technical difference, but to be an administrative consideration within the sphere of a business person when contemplating a secure tender process. It is not regarded as a technical innovation, but a natural choice for the bidders to use individual keys, keep the keys back as long as possible and furnish them as late as possible. And even if this was considered technical, it would, in the Board's view, be obvious to do so.
Furthermore, the Board considers that implementing a functionality in the networked e-tender system corresponding to D1 would be, at the claimed level of generality, obvious in view of the above business related requirement specification. The Board notes that the implementation is claimed in functional terms and neither the claim nor the application as a whole provide details on how encryption/decryption is achieved on a technical level. The application apparently relies in this respect on the skilled person's common general knowledge. The Board notes in this regard that if providing necessary software and data structures were beyond the skilled person's skills, the invention would not be sufficiently disclosed (Article 83 EPC).
Even if the appellant is correct that using different keys for different bidders is a difference over D1, this would in the Board's view imply - in the light of bidders creating their own individual keys for unlocking/decrypting being obvious - that the keys of different bidders are different, too. Therefore creating individual keys/pass-phrases would inherently require the use of multiple keys for implementation.
(See points 4.2 to 4.4 of the reasons)

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Admittance of objections raised in appeal, said objections having been raised before the opposition division against a different claim request (point 4.3 of the Reasons)

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While a feature might, in certain contexts, be seen as technical, the technical effect of a feature must be assessed as a whole and in the context of the claimed invention (reasons 2.7.4).

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If non-technical features have both a technical and a non-technical effect, the technical effect must be taken into account when assessing inventive step, but the technical effect must be clearly derivable from the application as a whole (Reasons 3.6.4 (1)).

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Application no.

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As ruled in decision G 1/10, Rule 140 EPC is not available to correct patents. G 1/10 does not restrict the scope of the exclusion of the applicability of the rule in any way.

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1. If the deletion of dependent claims after notification of a summons to oral proceedings enhances procedural economy by clearly overcoming existing objections without giving rise to any new issues this might constitute cogent reasons justifying exceptional circumstances in the sense of Article 13(2) RPBA 2020.
2. For a first medical use of a substance or composition according to Article 54(4) EPC to be sufficiently disclosed it is not required to show the suitability for each and every disease, but it usually suffices to show that at least one medical use is credibly achieved.

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Inventive step objection based on hindsight: arguments involving a convoluted set of sequential steps conceived starting from the claimed subject-matter and working backwards in attempt to bridge the gap with the prior art (Reasons 1.27)

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