INFORMATION FROM THE CONTRACTING / EXTENSION STATES
DE Germany
Judgment of the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice), 10th Civil Senate, dated 17 February 1999
(X ZR 22/97)*
Headword: "Kontaktfederblock" (Contact spring set)
Section 14 PatG (Patent Law)
Article: 69 EPC
Keyword: "Scope of patent protection - infringement by equivalent means - Formstein objection"
Headnote:
1. If the features of a granted patent claim take an identical form in the impugned embodiment, the so-called "Formstein defence" cannot be raised that the embodiment which allegedly infringes the patent is not an invention in the light of the state of the art (BGHZ 98, 12 ff).1
2. An examination of the so-called "Formstein defence" presupposes, that all the features and their functions as disclosed in the teaching according to the patent have been clarified, and furthermore that it has been established, or is at least assumed, that every single feature of the claim of the patent in suit is used in the impugned embodiment, but at least one of these features does not take an identical form.
DE 3/99
* Translation of official headnote of the judgment, whose reasons were published in full in GRUR 1999, 914.