A method claim comprising a step of “providing a donor flow channel for conveying fluid to and from a donor” was found to be excluded from patentability as treatment by surgery and therapy. The Board derived from the description that this step required performing venipuncture and found that venipuncture required professional medical expertise to be…
Faced with a claim directed at a method for determining airway pressure levels, the Board isolated a step from the claim that required changing the airway pressure of an artificial ventilator to observe certain responses. The Board found that this step could not be distinguished from what a medical doctor would do in order to…
The board refused to find a set of claims filed with the grounds of appeal admissible, because it concluded from the circumstances that the proprietor had deliberately refused to file these claims during first instance proceedings. The intention of Article 12(4) of the rules of procedure of the EPO boards of appeal was found by…
The patent concerned claims a method of cooling animals characterized in that the animals are cooled in a milking stall so that the animals go to the milking stall spontaneously. The patentee added a disclaimer of therapeutic use. The claim covered only carrying out the invention on animals that are neither in a pathological state…
The Enlarged Board of Appeal answered the question referred to it by the Board of Appeal in J 2/08. The Enlarged Board of Appeal held that after a decision to refuse a European patent application, the application remains pending, in the sense that a divisional application can be validly filed, until the expiry of the…
Questions submitted to the Enlarged Board. During opposition the Proprietor announced that it wanted a correction of the decision to grant from the examining division. The opposition division decided to stay proceedings and the Opponent appealed the decision to stay. The Board submitted questions to the Enlarged Board, asking (1) whether a request for correction…
Claim 1 of the opposed patent had a limitation to a range of values with a lower bound that was slightly higher than disclosed in the priority document. The Board refused to recognize priority. As the priority document was prior art, the claim lacked novelty. The proprietor filed an auxiliary request wherein protection at the…
The Board considered whether the introduction of the EPC 2000 raised the requirements for a notice of appeal to be admissible. Rule 99(1)(c) EPC 2000 requires that the notice of appeal contains ‘a request defining the subject of the appeal’. Rule 64 EPC 1973 required that the notice of appeal contains a statement identifying ‘the…
1. The Enlarged Board of Appeal considered the meaning that is to be given to the exclusion of patents on methods for ‘treatment by surgery’ (Article 53(c) EPC). The current construction used by the boards and the EPO as any non-significant intervention on the structure of an organism by conservative procedures was found to be…
In this case the board ruled that a claimed measurement method was excluded as a method of treatment by therapy under Article 53(c) EPC because it encompassed administering a compound that could have a therapeutic effect. It did not matter that the purpose of the relevant claim feature was not therapeutic, or that the proprietor…
