An invention entailing a talking doll with the ability to send e-mails was held to be unpatentable. The Board of Appeal rejected applicant’s argument that the invention was in the technical field of stuffed animal toys or dolls. There was no contribution in that field because the claim features did not change the toy’s design…
A recent Decision of the EPO’s Technical Board of Appeal 3.2.05 found claims of a “mother” patent to lack novelty over the disclosure content of an EPO application that was a daughter (divisional) to the mother patent. In many important jurisdictions, including the USA and Japan, Applicant’s own earlier filed but later published patent filings…
EPO practice on patenting plants knows two exclusions that are defined in Art. 53(b) EPC: the exclusion of “plant varieties”, and the exclusion of “essentially biological processes for the production of plants”. The recent referral G2/12 may change this practice and may lead to the exclusion of plants depending on how they were made. The…
The Board, exercising its power under Article 12(4) RPBA, decided not to admit the patent proprietor’s (appellant) main request in appeal, because he did not at all respond in substance to the opposition in first instance, but had merely stated to be interested in maintaining the patent as granted and that it would not reply…
The Board refused to admit the only set of claims, with an added limitation, filed in the patentee’s grounds of appeal. In the Board’s view, the applicant should have submitted the amended claims in first-instance proceedings. In view thereof, the Board exercised its discretion under Article 12(4) RPBA by not admitting the claims. Click here …
Since Rule 140 EPC is not available to correct the text of a patent, a patent proprietor’s request for such a correction is inadmissible whenever made, including after the initiation of opposition proceedings. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.KluwerIPCases.com
The interesting six-jurisdiction patent case between two of the world’s leading enzyme manufacturers, the Danish companies Danisco A/S (now part of DuPont) and Novozymes A/S has already been subject to earlier blogs both here and several times on EPLAW and PatLit. To recap the story briefly, Novozymes started the proceedings by applying for a preliminary…
The Board decided that the introduction of the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA) overruled prior case law on admission of new arguments not included in the grounds of appeal, as distinguished from new facts and evidence. The Board ruled that introduction of new arguments may violate Article 12(2) RPBA, which requires…
The objection raised by the opponent that the protected subject matter of a divisional application extends beyond the content of the parent application does not represent a “fresh ground for opposition”,. This bbecause in the present case i.c. the opposition division hadhas earlier raised an unrelated objection earlier, holdinstating that the patent based on the…
The board addressed the public availability of publications on the internet, holding that direct and unambiguous access of a document should be possible in order to become state of the art. A mere theoretical possibility of having access is not sufficient, nor is retrievability by a search engine per se. A safe test is that…
