EPC

The December issue 4|2019 of the journal epi Information contains four interesting contributions to the discussion on the novelty test for sub-ranges as used by the EPO. The EPO has a special novelty…

A post on the new guidelines for examination of the European Patent Office tops the list of most popular articles of the Kluwer Patent Blog in 2019. The enduring social problems at the EPO led to a…

As was rightly noted on this blog, the skilled person's "hope" of solving the objective technical problem using the means that led to the (later claimed) invention, has disappeared from the…

One of the key questions in the assessment of inventive step within the EPO is whether or not the skilled person will adapt or modify the teaching of the closest prior art and arrive at the invention…

This decision is certainly worth reading if you deal with inventive step objections of the form “abstract algorithm implemented on a generic computer” or the like. The Board of Appeal provides a…

As the clock strikes midnight on 31 December 2019, we hope that the new Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA) will not be the first thing on our minds. Nevertheless, the beginning of this…

Traveling back from an interesting and lively VPP meeting on a train at dawn through beautiful, lonesome parts of Germany, full of large forests hosting mythical creatures that made it into the fairy…

Times where a lot is written about matters of constitutional law are not necessarily good times. When the wheels of a state or state-like organization engage smoothly with each other and when…

The European Patent Office has today published an advance preview of its annual update to the Guidelines for Examination which will come into force on 1 November 2019. This year, there have been some…