b) Claim feature in itself imparts clear credible teaching 

The board in T 1018/02 stated that although a claim was not to be interpreted in a way which was illogical or did not make sense, the description could not be used to give a different meaning to a claim feature which in itself imparted a clear, credible technical teaching to the skilled reader. That also applied if the feature had not initially been disclosed in the form appearing in the claim (see also e.g. T 1195/01, T 474/15). In the case at issue the claim feature in question would have had to be deleted to achieve consistency with the original disclosure; however this was not possible under Art. 123(3) EPC 1973. See also T 197/10, which (in the context of examination of novelty) confirmed the approach that, in the event of a discrepancy between clearly defined claims and the description, those elements of the description not reflected in the claims are not, as a rule, to be taken into account.

In T 30/17 the board (considering added subject-matter) noted that Art. 69 EPC and its Protocol did not provide a basis for excluding what is literally covered by the terms of the claims, as these provisions related to the patent's (or patent application's) "extent of protection", which was primarily of concern in infringement proceedings. The board emphasised that in examination and opposition proceedings the value of future legal certainty was paramount. In the case in hand, the respondent (proprietor) had argued that the expression at issue in claim 1 as granted was linguistically meaningless and that the meaning could only be found by taking into consideration the claim context, the description and the general knowledge of the skilled person in the art. The board, however, considered that the expression was per se not ambiguous and emphasised that a (purported) discrepancy between the claims and the description was not a valid reason to ignore the clear linguistic structure of a claim and to interpret it differently (see e.g. T 431/03 and T 197/10) or to give a different meaning to a claim feature which in itself imparts a clear credible technical teaching to the skilled reader (see e.g. T 1018/02 and T 1395/07). See, however, also T 195/20 (in which the board underlined that the skilled person would not stop at determining the semantic roles of words in a phrase).