Interleaving & deinterleaving apparatus/SAMSUNG, European Patent Office (EPO Board of Appeal), 30 April 2009

Claim 1 of the patent application contained the feature that ‘the device is adapted to generate L addresses, which are smaller in number than N = Ng × 2m2 virtual addresses for reading data from said interleaver memory in which L data bits are stored’. The Board of Appeal noted that it might be true that claim 1 did not imply anything about optimal choices of m and Ng. However, according to the present Board, it is not a requirement of the European Patent Convention, and in particular not of Article 84 EPC, that the claims should specify the optimum way of carrying out the invention.

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.