Chapter III – Sufficiency of disclosure
A revised version of this publication entered into force. |
It is the responsibility of the applicants to ensure that they supply on filing their application, a sufficient disclosure, i.e. one that meets the requirements of Art. 83 in respect of the invention as claimed in all of the claims. If the claims define the invention, or a feature thereof, in terms of parameters, the application as filed must include a clear description of the methods used to determine the parameter values, unless a person skilled in the art would know what method to use or unless all methods would yield the same result (see F‑IV, 4.11). If the disclosure is seriously insufficient, such a deficiency cannot be cured subsequently by adding further examples or features without offending against Art. 123(2), which requires that amendments may not result in the introduction of subject-matter which extends beyond the content of the application as filed (see H‑IV, 2.1; see also H‑V, 2.2). Therefore, in such circumstances, the application must normally be refused. If, however, the deficiency arises only in respect of some embodiments of the invention and not others, it could be remedied by restricting the claims to correspond to the sufficiently described embodiments only, the description of the remaining embodiments being deleted.