3.4.11 Paper submitted to obtain an academic degree

In T 151/99 the board held that, in general, it appeared highly plausible that a paper submitted to obtain an academic degree (in this case a master's thesis) was not confidential, and that became a virtual certainty if the paper was referred to in published scientific work. If the reference was in a document published before the priority date of the patent in suit, it could be assumed that the paper had also been made available to the public before that date (see also T 451/00, T 538/09, T 1817/08, T 1266/11 and T 1057/09).