The Federal Court of Justice held that the fact that all of the embodiment examples in an application comprise a specific feature stands in the way of claiming protection for embodiments without this feature, if it can be derived from the content of the application that the means provided in the claim serve to solve…
This is the last post of my series on the EPO’s vision and the current reality, this time dealing with the issue of EPO and “trust”, including trust-building measures such as transparency, fairness and respect. Let’s begin by recalling the yardstick by which the EPO wants to be measured, its “vision”: Our vision – what…
I know that this is a patent blog. But something – I don’t know what, maybe it’s the upcoming meeting of the EPO’s Administrative Council – drives me to refer very briefly to a new CJEU ruling. Here is what the Court of Justice had to say about judicial independence in Case C-64/16. Emphases in…
Among other things, the EPO’s official vision also includes to set world-wide standards in efficiency, so let us look into this goal a bit more closely. To begin with, what is efficiency? Wikipedia defines it as follows: Efficiency is the extent to which time or effort is well used for the intended task or purpose….
Abstract This will be a very long post (sorry, dear readers!), yet it cannot and will not be comprehensive enough to cover all aspects of this topic. In summary, my take on EPO quality is that not all is bad and a lot of people are still doing a good job. However, it is presently…
What can people, in particular citizens of Munich and Bavaria, do if they feel that elementary constitutional rights are infringed, not somewhere abroad and far away, but literally next door, at the Isar river banks or in the Pschorrhöfe building? Unfortunately, this is no rhetorical question. If such things happen in the jurisdiction of German…
Part II (- sorry, this will be a bit longer, but a lot has accumulated recently…) How does the EPO in 2018 fare with regard to the criterion “expert, well supported and motivated staff”? To what extent is it already reality, and to what “vision” in the sense of fancy? In my personal view, it…
Part I – Introduction The word “vision” has a couple of fascinatingly different meanings. There is a famous saying by Helmut Schmidt, Germany’s chancellor from 1974-1982, who recommended to anyone proclaiming that he/she had a vision to see a doctor. According to wiktionary, vision may mean: 1. The sense or ability of sight. 2. Something…
In 2017 Russia has been in the news quite a lot, even though mostly not for good, due to its despicable efforts to influence the elections in the US and the Brexit referendum via social media. We will yet have to see and hopefully learn more about who supported these efforts in the US and…
The Federal Court of Justice held that a patent application is to be rejected if its subject-matter extends beyond the content of the application as originally filed and if this deficiency has not been rectified by the applicant upon request by the examiner (following FCJ X ZB 17/73 Regelventil). The incorporation of a feature according…
