Following decision G 1/03, the Board concluded that a disclaimer that is used to remove subject-matter falling under the prohibition of Article 53(a) EPC in combination with Rule 28(c) EPC, is allowable. The full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
The Examining Division had refused a patent application for a method and system of processing a payment card transaction. Before the Board of Appeal, the applicant requested suspension of the proceedings to await the opinion of the Enlarged Board of Appeal in G 3/08. The Board of Appeal refused to grant the requested suspension, because…
The Board of Appeal decided that the following applies as regards to sufficiency of disclosure: (1) the skilled person should be able to realise without undue burden substantially any embodiment falling in the ambit of a claim on the basis of the disclosure and/or common general knowledge; (2) the objection of lack of sufficient disclosure…
The selection of explicitly disclosed borderline values defining several (sub)ranges, in order to form a new (narrower) subrange, is not contestable under Article 123 (2) EPC when the ranges belong to the same list. However, the combination of an individual range from this list with another individual range from a second list that relates to…
In the case at hand, Olympus filed a petition for review against the decision of the Board of Appeal to revoke Olympus’ patent. Olympus argued that it had had no opportunity to comment on the grounds for this decision as it had never received the statement of the grounds of appeal and the invitation to…
This case concerns a referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeal regarding the interpretation of the term ‘pending application’ in the wording of Rule 25(1) EPC 1973. In the appealed decision from the receiving section, the receiving section held that from the date of the refusal by an examining division an application was no longer…
During appeal proceedings, the appellant argued lack of inventive step on the basis of public prior use of a composition for making the claimed product. The prior use appeared to relate to an ordinary commercial transaction. The patentee argued that the offer, sale and delivery of the product were only for test purposes. The Board…
The claims of the patent in suit related to a memory for sensing sub-groups of memory cells that required the activation of word line segments and corresponding sets of sense amplifiers in combination. The patentee argued that from one of the objectives of the invention mentioned in the original application, the skilled person could derive…
In the search report of the patent application several prior art references were mentioned that were not described in the patent application as originally filed, while they were known to the applicant. The Examining Division had decided that Rule 42(1) EPC 2000 would not allow a later introduction of the discussion of the prior art…
The Board of Appeal had to decide on a main request for a divisional application that corresponded to an auxiliary request for the parent application on which the Board had already finally decided. The Board of Appeal found the appeal for the divisional application inadmissible because subject-matter on which a final decision has been taken…
