Prioriteit van wat? De betekenis van ‘dezelfde uitvinding’ in de rechtspraktijk Rutger Kleemans 13 november 2014
Art. 4 onder C UvP
Met een eerste aanvrage, waarvan de dagtekening van het depot het begintijdstip van de termijn van voorrang is, moet worden gelijkgesteld een latere aanvrage, die hetzelfde onderwerp heeft als een eerder gedane aanvrage (…)
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Art. 87 lid 1 EOV Recht van voorrang
Degene die (..) een aanvrage heeft ingediend voor een octrooi (..) geniet voor het indienen van een Europese octrooi aanvrage voor dezelfde uitvinding een recht van voorrang gedurende een termijn van twaalf maanden vanaf de datum van de indiening van de eerste aanvrage.
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Art. 9 lid 1 ROW
Degene die (…) octrooi of een gebruikscertificaat dan wel bescherming van een gebruiksmodel heeft aangevraagd, geniet gedurende een termijn van twaalf maanden na de dag van die aanvrage in Nederland (…) een recht van voorrang ter verkrijging van octrooi van datgene, waarvoor door hem de in de aanhef bedoelde bescherming werd aangevraagd.
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“dezelfde uitvinding”
De latere aanvrage mag afwijken (en doet dat vaak ook omdat bij het indienen van de eerste aanvrage in veel gevallen spoed geboden is) mits maar sprake is van dezelfde uitvinding. “Bearing in mind that the subject-matter of a patent application commonly comprises creative thinking, it is not always immediately easy to describe and define such subject-matter in the most appropriate way, especially when under pressure to file a patent as soon as possible in order to establish the earliest possible priority date.” Patterson, The European Patent System, 2001 4
Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) G 2/98
The requirement for claiming priority of 'the same invention', referred to in Article 87(1) EPC, means that priority of a previous application in respect of a claim in a European patent application in accordance with Article 88 EPC is to be acknowledged only if the skilled person can derive the subject-matter of the claim directly and unambiguously, using common general knowledge, from the previous application as a whole.
‘directly and unambiguously’ : Priority / Novelty / Added Matter
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Case Law, Technical Boards of Appeal (TBA) 948/97
The subject-matter of the claim defining the invention in the European application has to be understood as “the specific combination of features present in the claim”
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T 647/97
The invention of subject-matter of a previous application was to be considered the same as that of a subsequent application if the disclosure of both applications was the same. This not only required that a solution to a given problem was the same, but also that the problem itself was the same in both applications. The proper definition of the problem to be solved in the priority document as understood by the skilled person reading the document with his common general knowledge in the art at the filing date was decisive to that end.
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T 250/06
In T 250/06 the board emphasised that, for priority to be acknowledged, it was not sufficient that a formal support for the claimed subject matter be found in the priority document; on the contrary, it pre-supposed that the priority document also provided an adequate technical teaching in respect of said subject-matter and this was the “same” teaching” as that of the European patent
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Enabling disclosure in the priority document
The priority document must disclose the invention claimed in the subsequent application in such a way that it can be carried out by a person skilled in the art.
T 0903/05 (Gemvax) Beyond the issue of enablement, the Board sees no legal basis for imposing additional criteria such as the presence of experimental data in the priority document which make plausible that the invention would work.
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Enabling disclosure, UK Hospira v Genetech, Birss J Although I am reluctant to do so I disagree with the statement in Gemvax. The requirement for priority is that the earlier application must be in respect of the same invention as the patent. (..) In order to make an enabling disclosure of an invention it must be possible to make a reasonable prediction that the invention will work. In the context of an invention which includes the achievement of a therapeutic effect as one of its features, absolute proof is not required but the patentee must show that the therapeutic effect is plausible (Regeneron paragraph 103). It seems to me that this logic applies just as much to priority as it does to sufficiency of disclosure (see also Biogen on the relationship between priority and sufficiency).(..) I find that in law the test for priority includes the requirement for plausibility in a case like this one. 10
EOB Guidelines for Examination, November 2014 2.2 The same invention The basic test to determine whether a claim is entitled to the date of a priority document is, as far as the requirement of "the same invention" is concerned (see F-VI, 1.3(iv)), the same as the test for determining whether or not an amendment to an application satisfies the requirement of Art. 123(2) (see H-IV, 2). That is to say, for the priority date to be valid in this respect the subject-matter of the claim must be directly and unambiguously derivable from the disclosure of the invention in the priority document, also taking into account any features implicit to a person skilled in the art in what is expressly mentioned in the document (see G 2/98).
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EOB Guidelines for Examination, November 2014 2.2 The same invention
(..)It is not necessary that the subject-matter for which priority is claimed be found among any claims in the previous application (..) The requirement that the disclosure must be specific means that it is not sufficient if the subject-matter in question is merely referred to in broad and general terms. A claim to a detailed embodiment of a certain feature would not be entitled to priority on the basis of a mere general reference to that feature in a priority document. Exact literal correspondence is not required, however. It is enough that, on a reasonable assessment, there is in substance a disclosure of the same subjectmatter of the claim. 12
Parallel met 123(2) T 1906/11: Whether an amendment qualifies as “intermediate generalization” or rather as “omission of an originally disclosed feature” or “multiple selection from two groups of alternative features” does not allow to draw a conclusion on whether this amendment is admissible under A 123(2). The only relevant question is whether the skilled person who is confronted with the amended version of the application or the patent, as compared to the skilled person who was only aware of the originally disclosed version, would find additional, technically relevant pieces of information in the amended version. Only when it is possible to find such additional, technically relevant pieces of information can there be a violation of the requirements of A 123(2). 13
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Parallel met 123(2) EOB Guidelines for Examination (OUD):
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EOB Guidelines for Examination, Nieuw per 1 nov. 2014 Aan paragraaf H-IV 2.3 is de volgende tekst toegevoegd: “When assessing the conformity of the amended claims to the requirements of Art. 123(2), the focus should be placed on what is really disclosed to the skilled person by the documents as filed as directed to a technical audience. In particular, the examiner should avoid disproportionally focusing on the structure of the claims as filed to the detriment of the subject-matter that the skilled person would directly and unambiguously derive from the application as a whole.”
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Ook parallel met nieuwheid, zie dus bijv. T 332/87
This means that, when examining novelty, different passages of one document may be combined provided that there are no reasons which would prevent a skilled person from such a combination. In general the technical teaching of examples may be combined with that disclosed elsewhere in the same document, e.g. in the description of a patent document, provided that the example concerned is indeed representative for the general technical teaching disclosed in the respective document.
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Hof Den Haag 27 januari 2009, SMT/Angiotech
9.2 Naar het oordeel van het hof bepaalt artikel 87(1) EOV, kort gezegd, dat een (Europese octrooi)aanvrage en het daarbij ingeroepen prioriteitsdocument "dezelfde uitvinding" dienen te betreffen.
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Hof Den Haag 29 januari 2013, Agfa/Xingraphics 4.13 dat [het recht op prioriteit] slechts erkend wordt indien de vakman de materie van de betreffende conclusie direct en ondubbelzinnig kan afleiden uit de voorrangsaanvraag. Daarbij is niet alleen maatgevend wat expliciet in de voorrangsaanvraag staat, maar ook hetgeen de vakman op basis van zijn algemene vakkennis op de dag van indiening van de voorrangsaanvraag impliciet meeleest. De voorrangsaanvraag wordt daarbij als geheel in aanmerking genomen. Bij de beoordeling wordt derhalve niet alleen gekeken naar de conclusies van de voorrangsaanvraag, maar ook naar de beschrijving en de eventuele tekeningen.
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Hof Den Haag 2 november 2010, Glaxo/Pharmachemie dat GB 083 voor de gemiddelde vakman voldoende aanwijzingen bevat om daaruit direct en ondubbelzinnig te kunnen afleiden dat (juist) Ondansetron geschikt is voor het verlichten van misselijkheid en braken (en dat dit therapeutisch effect inderdaad bereikt wordt).
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Vgz. Rb. Den Haag 12 mei 2014, Novartis / Sun
4.5. Novartis kan naar voorlopig oordeel geen beroep doen op de prioriteit van US 689 omdat de in conclusie 7 van het octrooi geclaimde uitvinding niet direct en ondubbelzinnig wordt geopenbaard in US 689. Meer specifiek openbaart US 689 niet direct en ondubbelzinnig het in conclusie 7 geclaimde doseringsbereik in combinatie met intraveneuze toediening.
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EPO Boards of Appeal Case Law 2013, p. 266
The patent must be construed by a mind willing to understand, not a mind desirous of misunderstanding.
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