Volker Tillmann

Prior art that requires fundamental reconfiguration of the disclosed solution to end up with something falling under the scope of protection of a claim cannot normally render the claimed subject…

The FCJ confirmed that inventive step is to be acknowledged if the feature(s) distinguishing the claimed invention from the starting point for the assessment of inventive step are not directly and…

The FCJ held that when inventive step is assessed, for each feature of the assessed claim which is not disclosed, i.e. directly and unambiguously derivable, to be considered obvious, an incentive for…

In a case concerning a patent relating to methods of transferring component tape information to a component mounting machine, the Federal Court of Justice held that when inventive step is assessed it…

The FCJ held that the general suitability of a technical means of the common general knowledge to solve a technical problem can only suffice as a motivation for the skilled person to make use of this…

According to the FCJ, when it comes to the question of whether a particular solution was obvious to the skilled person, it is irrelevant whether a different solution was more obvious. In the present…

The Federal Court of Justice confirmed that the definition of the person skilled in the art aims at defining a fictive person, from whose point of view the prior art and the patent is considered…