Electrical engineering deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism and includes control systems, medical electrical engineering, electrical energy systems, high-performance electronics, robotics, electric motors, digital and analogue circuits, circuit topologies, oscillators, amplifiers, filters, semiconductor components, silicon-based components, semiconductor systems, sensors, transistors, passive components, MEMs, smartcards, signal processing systems, digital signal processing, coding techniques, computer-related inventions, computer technology, embedded software, telecommunications, GSM/UMTS/CDMA systems and typologies, telecommunications coding techniques, positioning technologies, TFT/LCD/Plasma/(O)LED displays, Plasma physics, Solar cells, Semiconductor physics, Deposition techniques, etching techniques, thin film techniques, epitaxy techniques, Plasma processing, MRI, Thermodynamics, Nuclear physics, Nuclear energy, Nuclear applications in medicine, Geophysics, Aerodynamics, Sustainable energy technologies, Computational physics
The G3/08 opinion concerns the long-awaited view of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBoA) on the patentability of computer programs. The EBoA examined various issues regarding Article 112(1)(b) EPC. The EBoA held that positions taken in T1173/97 and T424/03 were clearly contradictory on the question whether it makes a difference whether a computer program is…
The appellant in this case filed a statement of grounds against the decision of the examining division to refuse a patent application. For the main request this statement only stated that it was believed that the application met the requirements of the European Patent Convention and maintained the arguments presented in the examination procedure. For…
The Examining Division had refused a patent application for a method and system of processing a payment card transaction. Before the Board of Appeal, the applicant requested suspension of the proceedings to await the opinion of the Enlarged Board of Appeal in G 3/08. The Board of Appeal refused to grant the requested suspension, because…
In these infringement proceedings initiated by Agfa against Xingraphics the Court held Agfa’s patent valid and dismissed Xingraphics cross border declaration of non-infringement due to lack of jurisdiction. Agfa’s infringement claim was dismissed as it was not sufficiently substantiated. Agfa was not allowed to supplement its evidence, since it had failed in a previous stage…
This case concerns a referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeal regarding the interpretation of the term ‘pending application’ in the wording of Rule 25(1) EPC 1973. In the appealed decision from the receiving section, the receiving section held that from the date of the refusal by an examining division an application was no longer…
The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s finding that Aerotel’s Patent relating to a method of making pre-paid landline telephone calls was invalid for want of inventive step over the principal prior art (the WATS system). Having made this finding it was unnecessary to consider Aerotel’s other grounds of appeal.Further, Aerotel’s arguments of commercial…
During appeal proceedings, the appellant argued lack of inventive step on the basis of public prior use of a composition for making the claimed product. The prior use appeared to relate to an ordinary commercial transaction. The patentee argued that the offer, sale and delivery of the product were only for test purposes. The Board…
The claims of the patent in suit related to a memory for sensing sub-groups of memory cells that required the activation of word line segments and corresponding sets of sense amplifiers in combination. The patentee argued that from one of the objectives of the invention mentioned in the original application, the skilled person could derive…
In the search report of the patent application several prior art references were mentioned that were not described in the patent application as originally filed, while they were known to the applicant. The Examining Division had decided that Rule 42(1) EPC 2000 would not allow a later introduction of the discussion of the prior art…
The Board of Appeal had to decide on a main request for a divisional application that corresponded to an auxiliary request for the parent application on which the Board had already finally decided. The Board of Appeal found the appeal for the divisional application inadmissible because subject-matter on which a final decision has been taken…
