2.8. Common general knowledge

In T 1727/14 the appellant (patent proprietor) had submitted documents D16 and D17 as evidence of the common general knowledge. D16 was a published European patent application and D17 an article published in a specialist journal. The board cited the boards' case law establishing that such documents were generally unsuitable as proof of the skilled person's common general knowledge, rejecting the appellant's argument that specialist journals were especially suitable as evidence of the relevant common general knowledge. For the purposes of patent law, common general knowledge was the knowledge the skilled person acquired from their training and professional experience, whereas specialist journals generally aimed to convey to the skilled person new information relevant for their job, i.e. things which normally had not yet – and indeed might never – become part of the common general knowledge. That did not mean that the content of a specialist journal could never serve as evidence of the common general knowledge. But it could not be inferred from the mere fact that something had been published in such a journal that it was part of that knowledge.