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This list provides a guide to decisions of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) relating to Article 52(2) and (3) EPC. These decisions touch the issue of patentable subject-matter under the European Patent Convention (EPC). The accompanying notes offer an explanation as to the content of the decision.
T 258/03, also known as Auction Method/Hitachi, is a decision of a Technical Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO), issued on April 21, 2004. It is a landmark decision for interpreting Article 52(1) and (2) of the European Patent Convention (EPC) which built on the principles suggested by the same Board in T 641/00 (Comvik, Two identities).
Article 52 prohibits certain patents, including patents on programs for computers, but only as such. It is often interpreted by European Patent Office as well as by courts in EU countries, that invention should have technical character. For example, while a mathematical method is not patentable, the application of such method to electrical ...
European Patent Office, Examination of computer-implemented inventions at the European Patent Office with particular attention to computer-implemented business methods, Official Journal EPO, 11/2007, pp 594–600. Philip Leith, Software and Patents in Europe, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2007, ISBN 9780521868396, pp. 212
This is a list of decisions and opinions of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) in chronological order of their date of issuance. The list includes decisions under Article 112(1)(a) EPC (following a referral from a Board of Appeal), opinions under Article 112(1)(b) EPC (following a referral from the President of the EPO), "to ensure uniform application of the law ...
Article 84 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) [1] specifies that the "matter" for which patent protection is sought in an application - the purported invention - shall be stated ("defined") in the claims. This legal provision also requires that the claims must be clear and concise, and supported by the description. [1]
Article 52(3) EPC then qualifies Art. 52(2) EPC by stating: The provisions of paragraph 2 shall exclude patentability of the subject-matter or activities referred to in that provision only to the extent to which a European patent application or European patent relates to such subject-matter or activities as such.
In addition to the consequences these legal provisions may have in practice, Rule 39.1 PCT is also significant from an interpretive perspective to understand the origin of the much debated Article 52(2) and (3) EPC (see Software patents under the European Patent Convention (EPC) and Article 52 EPC). The computer program exclusion was indeed ...