The FCJ confirmed that inventive step is to be acknowledged if the feature(s) distinguishing the claimed invention from the starting point for the assessment of inventive step are not directly and unambiguously derivable or at least rendered obvious by the prior art. This applies equally to functional features.
Case number: X ZR 51/06
Case date: 29 May 2018
Court: Federal Court of Justice of Germany
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
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