c) Amendment not allowed 

In T 526/92 the board held that if values of a parameter are only given in the examples (as single, punctate values), without the significance of this parameter becoming evident from the original specification, no range must be arbitrarily formed, which is open ended at one side and has one limit selected from the examples.

Similarly in T 1004/01, according to the board, the exemplified laminates and the peel strength thereof were disclosed only in a concrete technical context, without providing any preference for the claimed open ended range taking the exemplified parameter value as lower limit (peel strength "of at least 24 grams").

Decision T 526/92 was approved and cited by T 931/00 – also referring to T 201/83 (OJ 1984, 481) – which concerned the creation of a new parameter range by defining its upper limit by selecting a single value from an example. The board in T 931/00 stated that although figures in examples might, under specific conditions, be used to limit a range which was already present in the original application, they could not be used to define an entirely new relationship between parameters which had never been linked before. Such arbitrary new links between existing parameters introduced new matter, contrary to the requirements of Art. 123(2) and Art. 100(c) EPC 1973.

The board in T 1146/01 had to answer the question of whether one measurement of a selected characteristic or property of a sample disclosed only in an individual example could be relevant to the generality of the claimed subject-matter, separately from and irrespectively of the other parameters inherent to the same sample. The board distinguished this case from T 201/83. Formulating a new range on the basis of individual values taken from selected examples, which were not at all directly related to each other, meant that the reader was confronted with new information not directly derivable from the text of the application as originally filed.

In T 184/05 the board held that an impurity concentration value of a product obtained under specific process conditions could not be taken in strict isolation from the examples unless it had been demonstrated that this value was not so closely associated via the applied process with specific (undisclosed) maximum values of all other impurities comprised in the product. In the case in hand this was not the case.

In T 570/05 the proposed amendment was that the coating layer had a "thickness of from 220 to 500 nm", for which the only literal basis in the application as originally filed for the lower value of 220 nm was to be found in three examples; nowhere in the documents as filed did this value form the lower (or indeed any) end point of a range of thicknesses. Recalling the relevant case law namely, T 201/83, T 1067/97 and T 714/00 (see also in this chapter II.E.1.9. "Intermediate generalisations"), dealing with extracting an isolated feature, the board examined whether or not there existed a functional or structural relationship between the coating layer thickness, in particular its lower limit, and the remaining features of the claim. The board concluded that the condition of absence of any clearly recognisable functional or structural relationship was not satisfied in the present case.

In T 517/07 a newly introduced upper limit had been disclosed in the original application documents only as an isolated value in example 1. The board decided that singling out an individual value from a specific embodiment and applying it as a new upper limit in claim 1 created a new – now capped – value range that was not disclosed in the original documents.