欧州特許庁が、3月1日から適用される新しい審査ガイドライン案が発表されました。
Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office (March 2021 edition)
2021年の審査ガイドライン改訂時に、許可時にクレームより広い内容が明細書にある際の削除の要件が厳しくなっていました。一方で、T 1989/18において、審判部でそのような過度な要件は欧州特許条約やその規則に適合しないという決定がされおり、審査ガイドラインと審判部の決定の間で不一致が生じている状態でした。
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Section F-IV, 4.3の内容をみると、今回は例えば下記のように「実施形態が特許請求の範囲と整合しているかどうか疑わしいボーダーラインのケースについては、疑義の利益が出願人に与えられます。」というように軟化しているように読める文言もあります。
For borderline cases where there is doubt as to whether an embodiment is consistent with the claims, the benefit of the doubt is given to the applicant.
また単純に「発明」を「開示」に変えることでは要件を満たさないという記述も削除されたりしています。
In addition, merely changing the wording "invention" to "disclosure" and/or the wording "embodiment" to "example", "aspect" or similar is not sufficient to clearly state that this part of the description does not fall under the scope of the claimed invention. It has to be explicitly specified that this part of the description does not describe part of the claimed invention.
とはいえ、明細書の特定の発明主題がクレームと適合しなくなった際は、その特定の発明主題を明細書から削除するか、クレームされた発明主題にカバーされないものであることを明細書に追記することが必要になるようです。さらに、単純に"embodiments not falling under the scope of the appended claims are to be considered merely as examples suitable for understanding the invention"と記載するのみではダメで、カバーされない発明主題を"Embodiments X and Y are not encompassed by the wording of the claims but are considered as useful for understanding the invention"と特定しないといけないようですね。
Example: Independent claim defines a vehicle with a broad feature of a "motor", together with other features. The description and the drawings comprise Embodiment 1, in which the vehicle has an electric motor, and Embodiment 2, in which the vehicle has a combustion engine. During the prosecution, in order to fulfil the requirements of inventive step, the independent claim is amended to specify a vehicle employing an electric motor since the combination of claimed features using a combustion engine was anticipated by the prior art. Embodiment 2 is no longer consistent with the independent claim, unless it can be inferred from this embodiment that the combustion engine is used in combination with the electric motor. This inconsistency can be rectified either by removing Embodiment 2 from the description and drawings or by marking Embodiment 2 as not being covered by the claimed subject-matter (e.g. "Embodiment 2 is not covered by the subject-matter of the claims" or similar wording).
An inconsistency between the description and the claims cannot be removed by introducing at the beginning of the description a generic statement such as "embodiments not falling under the scope of the appended claims are to be considered merely as examples suitable for understanding the invention" without indicating which parts of the description are no longer covered. To remove the inconsistency, such a statement has to refer to specific embodiments (e.g. "Embodiments X and Y are not encompassed by the wording of the claims but are considered as useful for understanding the invention").
