6.4 Lack of support vs. insufficient disclosure 

Although an objection of lack of support is an objection under Art. 84, it can often, as in the above examples, also be considered as an objection of insufficient disclosure of the invention under Art. 83 (see F‑III, 1 to F-III, 3), the objection being that the disclosure is insufficient to enable the skilled person to carry out the "invention" over the whole of the broad field claimed (although sufficient in respect of a narrow "invention"). Both requirements are designed to reflect the principle that the terms of a claim must be commensurate with, or be justified by, the invention's technical contribution to the art. Therefore, the extent to which an invention is sufficiently disclosed is also highly relevant to the issue of support. The reasons for failure to meet the requirements of Art. 83 may in effect be the same as those that lead to the infringement of Art. 84 as well, namely that the invention, over the whole range claimed, extends to technical subject-matter not made available to the person skilled in the art by the application as filed (see T 409/91, Reasons 2 and 3.3 to 3.5).

For example, where a technical feature is described and highlighted in the description as being an essential feature of the invention, to comply with Art. 84 this feature must also be part of the independent claim(s) defining the invention (see F‑IV, 4.5.1). By the same token, if the (essential) technical feature in question is absent from the claims, and no information is given on how to perform the claimed invention successfully without the use of said feature, the description does not disclose the invention defined in the claim(s) in the manner prescribed by Art. 83.

An objection under both Art. 84 and Art. 83 may also be justified. An example would be a claim relating to a known class of chemical compounds defined by measurable parameters, when the description does not disclose a technical teaching allowing the skilled person to manufacture those compounds complying with the parametric definition, and this is not otherwise feasible by the application of common general knowledge or routine experimentation. Such a claim would be both technically not supported and not sufficiently disclosed, regardless of whether the parametric definition meets the clarity requirement of Art. 84.

Whether the objection is raised as lack of support or as insufficiency is not important in examination proceedings; but it is important in opposition proceedings since there only the latter ground is available (see D‑III, 5).