Referral of the President of the EPO to the Enlarged Board of Appeal, concerning points of law on computer-implemented inventions
Further to a decision of the UKPTO (http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2008/85.html), as well as more recent Decisions of the Board of Appeal of the EPO (T424/03 e T258/03, T125/01), the EPO President has decided on October, 22 to refer a relevant point of law to the Enlarged Board of Appeal, G3/08, whose text is herewith attached.
The text includes four very articulated questions, whose answer entails a synthesis of all the former case law on the matter of computer-implemented inventions, included the above-mentioned UKPTO decision.
The most important point is the possibility to claim a computer program having the possibility to perform a method when running on a computer, which would be refused. In practice, stemming from the recent trends of the Board of Appeal of the EPO, the claims should be directed only to the method and to the program when running on the computer, thus certainly excluding the claims of memory carrier whereon the program is stored.
 |
|
go
back to News > Patents and Designs
go
back to News Main Index
