Searching the EPO’s website for the terms “user-friendly” and/or “user friendliness” will result in your screen being flooded by hits describing the remarkable achievements and ongoing efforts by the EPO to be a fantastic (in the UK they would probably even call it world-beating) service provider for its users. As with other noble goals such…
As readers of this blog will be aware, the EPO applies a quite peculiar and unique method to the analysis of inventive step, the “problem-solution approach”. This approach breaks the statutory question of Art 56 whether the invention was, having regard to the state of the art, obvious to a person skilled in the art,…
The new Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA), which came into force on 1 January 2020, will be a cornerstone in helping the EPO’s Boards of Appeal meet their objectives of settling 90% of cases within 30 months of receipt and reducing the number of pending cases to fewer than 7,000 by…
Plants and animals exclusively obtained by essentially biological processes are not patentable. That is the opinion (G 3/19) of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO). According to an EPO press communiqué of 14 May 2020, the “Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office adopted a dynamic interpretation of…
The decision of the European Patent Office to start holding videoconferences as the standard way of conducting oral proceedings in examination and opposition proceedings is facing heavy criticism. There has been no testing, no consultation, the EPO doesn’t have the facilities, it may be discriminatory and in violation of Article 113(1) EPC, according to the…
The EPO’s biennial fee increases come into force on 1 April 2020 and include a 20% hike of the appeal fee. At the same time, new appeal fee refund provisions are being introduced through an amendment to Rule 103 EPC. These are intended to encourage appellants to continuously review whether to continue or withdraw their…
by Sabine Möhle, Klemens Stratmann and Thorsten Bausch Decision T 1621/16 of Technical Board of Appeal 3.3.06 deals with a patent concerning a liquid hand dishwashing detergent composition. In a broader context, T 1621/16 will be of interest for practitioners struggling with the allowability of amendments under Article 123(2) EPC based on multiple selections from…
The Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) in Germany expects a ruling in case 2 BvR 739/17, concerning the complaint against German ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement ‘within the next few months’. An FCC spokesman has declared this in reaction to a query of this blog. Earlier this week, the FCC published the list of…
The inventor designated in a European patent has to be a human being and not a machine. That is the core message of two recent EPO refusals of patent applications in which an AI system was designated as the inventor. The EPO decisions, concerning the applications EP 18 275 163 and EP 18 275 174, both filed in…
Patent Attorneys like myself are not known for their love of excitement. For example, I like reading lists. One regrettably exciting item that appears to have slipped off the ‘things to look out for in 2020’ lists that I have seen is the outcome of the constitutional complaints against the EPO in Germany. The outcome…
