EPO Decision

G 1/19, which admits the patentability of a computer-implemented simulation, was the second opportunity for the Enlarged Board of Appeal to rule on the assessment of the patentability of computer…

The Odyssey, which became synonymous for an eventful journey, originally refers to the perilous return of Odysseus to his homeland of Ithaca after the Trojan War. After the year 2020, marked by the…

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…

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…

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…

One of the worst nightmares or, in a few cases, real events in a patent professional’s life is when he/she realizes that an important term has inadvertently been missed and the usual means of term…

Late in 2018, Board 3.5.07 issued two decisions on appeals from Examining Division decisions, in which the length of the examination procedure was excessive.  The Board decided that such delays can…

Today, in the decision T 0489/14 the EPO’s Boards of Appeal published their referral of three questions relating to computer implemented simulations to the Enlarged Board of Appeal. Referrals to the…

The EPO’s Problem-Solution-Approach is, on the face of it, simple and widely applied also in the national jurisprudence of the EPC member states. It starts with the determination of a “closest prior…