3. Clarté des revendications

Catchword:

Any unclarity that may arise from an ambiguity in an application as filed is to the detriment of a patent proprietor, who is ultimately responsible for the drafting of the application as filed and its claims. The fact that a feature in the application as filed is unclear cannot therefore justify or excuse the complete deletion of the unclear feature or its replacement by another feature if this results in an extension beyond the content of the application as filed. What prompted a patent proprietor to make a particular amendment to the claims cannot have any influence on the outcome of the assessment of the ground for opposition under Article 100(c) EPC (point 8 of the Reasons).

Résumé

In T 147/22 the respondent (opponent) raised several clarity objections, which were mainly directed to the expression "consisting essentially of" and to the fact that the ingredients cited in claim 1 were associated with a function.

On the first aspect, the board noted that the expression "consisting essentially of" limited the ingredients in the composition of claim 1 to those defined in components (a) to (d), although further non-active ingredients could be present provided they did not materially affect the chemical stability of TAS-102. The respondent had argued that the expression "consisting essentially of" rendered claim 1 unclear because the skilled person would not know which were the compounds that did not impair the stability of TAS-102 in the composition, and the patent did not contain any information in that respect. According to the board, however, the nature and amount of those additional ingredients was strongly limited by the condition that they must not impair TAS-102 stability. Furthermore, the skilled person confronted with a composition containing components (a) to (d) and additional ingredients could easily determine whether or not the additional ingredients impair TAS-102 stability. Testing the chemical stability of active compounds in a composition was standard practice in the field of pharmaceutical formulations. Such tests were illustrated in Test Examples 1 to 5 of the patent for the particular case of TAS-102. Therefore, the skilled person could easily determine by standard comparative tests whether or not a given composition consisted essentially of components (a) to (d).

With regard to the functional definition of the ingredients in claim 1, the board held that the criterion for assessing whether a compound had the function assigned to it was the function (or functions) that the skilled person would assign to that compound in the context of a given formulation. Contrary to the respondent's view, the formulator's intention was irrelevant in that respect. It was undisputed that the functional features "excipient", "disintegrating agent", "binder", "lubricant", "flavouring agent", "colourant" and "taste-masking agent" were standard in the technical field of pharmaceutical formulations. The skilled person would have no difficulty in determining whether a given formulation ingredient fulfils one or more of these functions on the basis of common general knowledge. These were functional features which were generally allowed if the invention could not be defined more precisely without unduly restricting the scope of the invention. Furthermore, in the present case, the main ingredients were not solely defined by functional features. They were further limited by structural features: for instance, the excipient according to component (b) was selected from lactose, sucrose, mannitol and erythritol. In view of common general knowledge and the structural limitations of the functional features, the board considered that the definition of the ingredients in claim 1 was not unclear.

The respondent's objection was based on the possibility that an ingredient fulfilled more than one function and, depending on its function, the amount of the compound in the composition could vary. For instance, polyvinyl alcohol was generally known to be a binder and a lubricant. If it was considered a binder, it could be present in an amount of 0.001 to 5% by mass while it could not be present if it was considered a lubricant.

The board disagreed. The fact that polyvinyl alcohol was known to be a binder and a lubricant did not render the claim unclear. If polyvinyl alcohol was present in the composition, it necessarily played the role of a binder, even if it also fulfilled the function of a lubricant. Therefore, it should be counted as a binder that may be present in an amount of 0.001 to 5% by mass in the composition. Considering arbitrarily that polyvinyl alcohol could function exclusively as a lubricant and that therefore its presence would render the composition different from the one in claim 1 would be unrealistic. Certainly this was not how the skilled person would read the claim.

Moreover, the board stated that the fact that "excipient" was a very broad term did not mean that it was unclear. "Excipient" was a standard term in pharmaceutical formulations.

Résumé

In T 1526/22 the application related to a method (and a corresponding apparatus) for estimating a "state" of an ego vehicle, for use in a motor vehicle driver assistance system for the ego vehicle. The examining division had objected that claims 1 and 12 failed to meet the requirements of Art. 84 EPC for two reasons:

(1) the wording "the first state and the second state each include at least one local object attribute describing a local object located in the vicinity of the ego vehicle, wherein the local object is a local vehicle" did not allow to unambiguously derive the meaning of an attribute describing a local object, for example whether it was limited or not to a colour of said local vehicle; and

(2) the wording "for a motor vehicle driver assistance for an ego vehicle" suggested that an effect supporting motor vehicle assistance was to be produced, which was however not apparent from the wording of the claim.

In both cases, it was said that claims 1 and 12 had to be limited in order for the claimed subject-matter to be in agreement with the effect and problem argued by the appellant. Reference was made in that respect to the Guidelines F-IV, 4.5.1.

As regards (1) the board considered the recited feature to be broad but not unclear: "at least one local object attribute" could be any attribute of the local vehicle that was suitable for use by a driver assistance system. It could be, for instance, the local vehicle's position or velocity or even its colour (e.g. as it could be relevant for a classification of that vehicle).

As regards (2) the board interpreted the wording of claim 1 "an apparatus for a motor vehicle driver assistance system for an ego vehicle" as meaning an apparatus suitable for a motor vehicle driver assistance system for an ego vehicle, as is usual for a purpose feature in an apparatus claim in the form "apparatus for ...". Claim 1 did not require the claimed apparatus to be configured to provide the output of the state estimator as input to a driver assistance system.

Claim 12 was directed to "a method for estimating a state of an ego vehicle, the method being implemented on a compute module, the state being for use in a motor vehicle driver assistance system for the ego vehicle". The board noted that last statement appeared to define an intended use of the calculated state obtained by the claimed method. This was not a purpose feature of the kind "method for...", which could in certain circumstances be considered to imply a corresponding method step, but rather of the kind "data for...". The claim did not specify any method step in which the calculated state would be actually used for that purpose, nor did the claim comprise any other feature that would establish that said use was part of the claimed method, be it explicitly or implicitly. The board understood this feature as merely requiring the calculated state to be suitable for use in a motor vehicle driver assistance system for the ego vehicle, in which case there would be no clarity problem. However, in view of the other objections, this issue was left open.

Moreover, the board observed that the examining division had not referred to any specific passage of the description in support of its objections. Hence, the passage of the Guidelines F-IV, 4.5.1 "Objections arising from missing essential features", cited by the examining division, did not support the raised objections.

However, the board raised further objections and concluded that claims 1 and 12 lacked clarity under Art. 84 EPC. In particular, the board noted that according to the third and fourth embodiments, reflected in dependent claim 5, the prediction model and the update model were "combined into a combined ANN". In these embodiments, the combined ANN carried out an estimation of the second state taking as input the first state and the measurements of the second state but without necessarily performing separate prediction and update calculations, as suggested by claim 1. This cast doubt as to how the features of claim 1 related to the prediction and update elements were to be interpreted, rendering claim 1 unclear. Similar considerations applied to claim 12.

Résumé

In T 1726/22 the claimed subject-matter was defined by parameters; however, even though the claims related to an acetylated wood as such, the parameters, i.e. the shrinkage ratios, were defined in relation to the wood before acetylation. The application did not mention anything regarding how the shrinkage ratios, relative to the shrinkage before acetylation, could be determined on the basis of the acetylated wood.

According to the appellant, the shrinkage ratios could be easily determined during the manufacture of the acetylated wood, during which the wood before acetylation was necessarily available and its shrinkage could thus be measured easily. The board found that this argument was not convincing. It noted that it was not enough for the requirement of clarity to be fulfilled that the parameter could be measured when manufacturing the wood, as the manufacturing method was not specified in the claim. The skilled person needs to be able to determine whether a given acetylated wood falls within the scope of the claim, the claim being directed to an acetylated wood as such. As outlined in T 849/11, an applicant who chooses to define the scope of the claim by parameters should ensure, inter alia, that a skilled person can easily and unambiguously verify whether they are working inside or outside the scope of the claim; however, in the present case, it was impossible for the skilled person faced with the acetylated wood to revert to the manufacturing process during which the shrinkage before acetylation could have been measured, or to the unacetylated wood.

The appellant also argued that the skilled person could alternatively measure the shrinkage ratio by using "a reference non-acetylated wood sample of the same wood species having similar properties". In the appellant's view this meant the same wood species of the same geographic origin, and the same part of the tree, i.e. heartwood or sapwood. The appellant submitted that the skilled person could identify the wood species by isotope analysis.

The board pointed out that using a reference wood was not suggested anywhere, let alone specified in the claim. Even if it was nevertheless assumed that the skilled person had the idea to turn to using a reference wood, they would not find any instructions on how to select a suitable reference wood. It thus could not be concluded that the skilled person would necessarily select a wood using the same criteria as identified by the appellant. Considering that the choice of the reference wood, and indeed the choice of the measuring method in general, was in no way limited, it could not be concluded that repeatable and reliable results for the shrinkage ratios would be obtained on this basis, irrespective of the question of whether such a reference wood could be reliably identified, and whether such a reference wood was at all representative of the (acetylated) wood under consideration.

The board recalled that there are cases in which it is not necessary to specify the measuring method for a parameter in the claim, namely when it is ("convincingly") shown that the method to be employed belongs to the skilled person's common general knowledge, or all the methodologies known in the relevant technical field for determining this parameter yield the same result within the appropriate limit of measurement accuracy (T 849/11); however, it was a mere assertion by the appellant that the skilled person could and would use a reference wood, and that this would lead to reliable results. This assertion was not even supported by the application, nor was any other supporting information available. By contrast with the appellant's view, it thus could not be concluded that the present case would be such an exceptional case in which it would be unnecessary to specify the measuring method. The requirements of Art. 84 EPC were therefore not met.