The Board emphasized that there was a relation between who was to be considered to be the skilled person for judging inventive step on one hand and the choice of the closest prior art on the other hand. A general problem to modify a product from one field so that it could be used in any field failed to incite the relevant skilled person to select application to the specific other field of the patent, and directing the problem to a specific other field would add an impermissible pointer to the solution.
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
________________________
To make sure you do not miss out on regular updates from the Kluwer Patent Blog, please subscribe here.
