b) Enabling disclosure 

In T 1724/08 the board held that the criterion of "direct and unambiguous disclosure" was quite different from the criterion submitted by the appellant, namely whether a person skilled in the art in view of the disclosure was enabled to achieve the envisaged result, i.e. the claimed functionality, without undue difficulty. This latter criterion would allow many different new definitions of subject-matter, none of which would need to be derivable "directly" and "unambiguously" from the earlier application as filed.

In T 2593/11 the examining division had taken the view that it was not self-evident that devices according to claim 1 could actually be manufactured using a specific fabric and, therefore, the manufacturing of the device using this fabric was not disclosed. The board observed that the requirements of Art. 123(2) EPC differed from those of Art. 83 EPC. Art. 123(2) EPC aimed more particularly to prevent inventors from obtaining protection for inventions they had not thought of at the date of filing, respectively not put into their application as filed. Art. 83 EPC aimed more particularly to prevent them from obtaining protection for "theoretical" inventions which could not be carried out at the date of filing. While in some specific instances there might be a link between the two, in the case at issue, the manufacturing of the device using the specific fabric was clearly disclosed.