T 1069/01 12-08-2002

1. The appeal is admissible.

2. Procedural matters

In the sole communication dated 23 September 1999, the Examining Division informed the applicant, that the deficiencies mentioned in the international preliminary examination report gave rise to identical objections under the corresponding provisions of the EPC. The appellant was therefore invited to file amendments in order to remedy these deficiencies.

In its letter dated 30 December 1999 the applicant presented detailed arguments why in its view the objections raised by the Examining Division as to independent claims 1 and 6 were not well founded. It filed an amended set of claims, where independent claims 1 and 6 remained unchanged.

According to Article 96(2) EPC, the Examining Division shall invite the applicant "as often as necessary" to file observations. The expression "as often as necessary" indicates that the Examining Division has a discretion which has to be exercised objectively in the light of the circumstances of each case.

In the Board's view, that discretion was exercised properly, since claims 1 and 6 had not been amended and the arguments put forward by the applicant still failed to convince the Examining Division. Consequently there is no procedural violation in this respect.

3. According to the jurisprudence of the Boards of Appeal the clarity requirement of Article 84 EPC has to be interpreted as meaning not only that a claim must be comprehensible from a technical point of view but also that it must define clearly the subject-matter of the invention that is to say specify all the essential features thereof. As essential features have to be regarded all features which are necessary to obtain the desired effect or differently expressed which are necessary to solve the technical problem with which the application is concerned (see T 32/82, OJ EPO 1984, 354, point 15).

In the present case, the nearest prior art is that stated on page 2 of the description which relates to an apparatus for concave shaping a metal strip adapted to pass the metal strip transversely to its length through a shaping set of rolls at which the concave shape is applied to the metal strip.

According to the patent application, an apparatus of this kind suffers from the problem that the lateral end areas of the bent strip tend to end up planar because the rolls are unable to subject the lateral ends to a curve-creating force, (see page 2, second full paragraph of the description).

Therefore the technical problem to be solved by the present invention is to overcome or at least substantially reduce the above-mentioned drawback.

In an apparatus of the type stated in the prior art portion of claim 1, this problem is solved according to the invention by a flexible belt or web-like member adapted to support the strip in its passage through the shaping set of rolls.

In accordance with the process aspect of the present invention, this problem is solved in a method as defined in the prior art portion of claim 5 by supporting the strip in its passage through the shaping set of rolls by means of a flexible belt or web-like member.

Independent claims 1 and 5 as at present drafted both specify that the strip is passed transversely to its length through the shaping set of rolls. The claimed apparatus need not comprise means for advancing the strip into the shaping set of rolls in order to solve the above problem. It is also observed that the claimed flexible belt or web-like member is "adapted to support the strip in its passage through the shaping set of rolls". This necessarily implies that the flexible belt or web-like member which supports the strip is part of the means for advancing the strip into the shaping set of rolls.

The feature that the shaping set of rolls comprises "at least three rolls" is also not essential to solve the above problem or to define the invention clearly. As rightly stated by the appellant (applicant) it is immediately apparent to a skilled person that these rolls could e.g. be replaced by two lower rolls and an overhead non-rolling beam which is adapted to move into the gap defined by the two underlying rolls. To add such feature as required by the Examining Division would therefore unduly restrict the claim.

The Board is thus satisfied that taking into consideration the amendments made to the independent claims 1 and 5 the objection of lack of clarity cannot be sustained.

4. The Examining Division has only raised an objection of lack of clarity and accepted that the claimed subject-matter is novel and inventive over the cited prior art documents.

It is evident from the statements in point 3 above that the apparatus according to claim 1 and the method according to claim 5 differ from the nearest prior art acknowledged in the patent application by the features stated in the characterising portion of these claims.

The subject-matter of the claims is also novel having regard to the prior art documents cited in the search report, due to the fact that they i.a. all fail to disclose the step of passing the strip transversely to its length through a shaping set of rolls.

Furthermore, there is nothing in the cited prior art which could have led the skilled person to arrange a flexible belt or web-like member for supporting the strip in its passage transversely to its length through the shaping set of rolls, in order to ensure concave shaping across the whole width of the strip.

Therefore the subject-matter of independent claims 1 and 5 involves an inventive step (Article 56 EPC).