2.8. Common general knowledge
2.8.3 Specialist journals as common general knowledge
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In T 475/88 the board's view was that the content of specialist journals, or "standard magazines", like the content of patent specifications did not usually belong to the common general knowledge of the average skilled person because it was not normally part of that person's active knowledge and had to be acquired through a comprehensive search. In T 676/94 the board concluded that the question of whether the contents of a specialist journal formed part of the average knowledge of a skilled person depended on the facts of the case. In T 595/90 (OJ 1994, 695), an article in a specialist journal reporting on the results of a classic test was regarded as common general knowledge.
Numerous publications in the specialist press over a fairly short time, reporting on meetings and research in a particularly active field of technology, could reflect common general knowledge in this field at that time (T 537/90). The board in T 26/13 observed that, although articles appearing in specialist journals were not, strictly speaking, part of the common general knowledge, the skilled person did read them for their own person development and so, taken together, they could permit inferences as to what that knowledge covered. See also T 2196/15, in which, by way of exception, a scientific article was taken into account.
- T 1727/14
Artikel in Fachzeitschriften und Fachwissen (siehe Punkt 1.1) Zulassung einer Erklärung, die einen Bruch einer Geheimhaltungsverpflichtung darstellen könnte (siehe Punkt 1.2)
- Case law 2019
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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.