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BOARDS OF APPEAL

Information from the Enlarged Board of Appeal

Communication from the Enlarged Board of Appeal concerning case G 1/06

By interlocutory decision T 1409/05 dated 30 March 2006, Technical Board of Appeal 3.4.03 has referred the following points of law to the Enlarged Board of Appeal under Article 112(1(a) EPC:

(language of the proceedings)

(1) In the case of a sequence of applications consisting of a root (originating) application followed by divisional applications, each divided from its predecessor, is it a necessary and sufficient condition for a divisional application of that sequence to comply with Article 76(1) EPC, second sentence, that anything disclosed in that divisional application be directly, unambiguously and separately derivable from what is disclosed in each of the preceding applications as filed?

(2) If the above condition is not sufficient, does said sentence impose the additional requirement

(a) that the subject-matter of the claims of said divisional be nested within the subject-matter of the claims of its divisional predecessors?

or

(b) that all the divisional predecessors of said divisional comply with Article 76(1) EPC?

The text of the referral in the English language is available on the Website of the European Patent Office under

legal.european-patent-office.org/dg3/pdf/t051409ex1.pdf

The case is pending under Ref. No. G 1/061.