1.3.9 Claim interpretation when assessing compliance with Article 123(2) EPC
In T 2002/13 the board referred to established case law, in particular T 190/99 (see chapter II.E.2.3.3) according to which the claims must be read with a mind willing to understand and to make technical sense of them, thereby ruling out illogical or technically meaningless interpretations. The board recalled that the claims were directed to a person skilled in the art. However, the case law did not allow the reader to disregard an illogical or technically inaccurate feature of a claim and hence to interpret such a feature in a correct manner. Thus, if a claim included contradictory features, this contradiction could not be resolved by merely disregarding the technically inaccurate feature and considering only the convenient technically meaningful feature. All the less so when assessing the compliance of these two features with Art. 123(2) EPC. In the board's view, any other approach would provide an unwarranted advantage to the patentee/appellant. See also the abstract of T 81/13 in chapter II.E.1.4.7 "Elimination of inconsistencies and unclear features".