The EPO Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) has today issued its decision on the questions referred in G2/21.
The order issued by the Enlarged Board of Appeal reads as follows:
1. Evidence submitted by a patent applicant or proprietor to prove a technical effect relied upon for acknowledgement of inventive step of the claimed subject-matter may not be disregarded solely on the ground that such evidence, on which the effect rests, had not been public before the filing date of the patent in suit and was filed after that date.
2. A patent applicant or proprietor may rely upon a technical effect for inventive step if the skilled person, having the common general knowledge in mind, and based on the application as originally filed, would derive said effect as being encompassed by the technical teaching and embodied by the same originally disclosed invention.
The EBA decision can be found here
The EPO press release can be viewed here
