Patent case: Phosphatidylcholin, Germany

The Federal Court of Justice held that a patent application is to be rejected if its subject-matter extends beyond the content of the application as originally filed and if this deficiency has not been rectified by the applicant upon request by the examiner (following FCJ X ZB 17/73 Regelventil).

The incorporation of a feature according to which the claimed composition must not contain a certain substance is not necessarily an unallowable extension (delimiting from FCJ X ZB 75/08 Reifenabdichtmittel).

Case date: 25 July 2017

Case number: X ZB 5/16

Court: Federal Court of Justice of Germany

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