tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5574479.post8312302396523084406..comments2024-03-28T16:45:51.051+00:00Comments on The IPKat: Deep fat fryer patent almost gets its chipsVerónica RodrÃguez Arguijohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05763207846940036921noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5574479.post-7243778783247127132014-03-05T13:41:28.496+00:002014-03-05T13:41:28.496+00:00Another nice teaching point to draw upon in this d...Another nice teaching point to draw upon in this decision concerns whether Claim 10 was obvious. Not just teaching candidate patent attorneys either. The interested EPO circles could learn something here too.<br /><br />The judge thought 30 year old Vogt to be unrealistic as a prior art starting point (even though the specification of the patent in suit suggests it to be the Applicant's chosen basis of the c-i-t claim of the patent), and anyway that too many constructional changes were needed, to get from Vogt to something inside the ambit of the claim. <br /><br />But if you look at each of these features through EPO eyes, each is a routine way to solve a different "partial problem". So, with no synergy between the features of the characterizing portion of the claim, Vogt would probably have worked better on the mainland than it did in London.<br /><br />In London though, the judge was waiting for an obviousness attack on Claim 10 starting from the common general knowledge, but it never came. Why that, I wonder, for if it had, the outcome also in London might have been different.<br /><br />Any chance of an Appeal?MaxDreinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5574479.post-73473616820140071872014-03-04T06:25:54.527+00:002014-03-04T06:25:54.527+00:00I lament yet another case with a "characteriz...I lament yet another case with a "characterized in that" 2-part claim not tied by the description to any particular prior art "starting point" reference. <br /><br />For me, a 2-parter has sense only as an artefact of the EPO Problem and Solution Approach to obviousness and otherwise serves only to confuse rather than clarify. There is all the difference in the world between an EPO 2-parter and a USPTO "improvement" claim, but few people grasp that difference.<br /><br />Personally, I think there is no place for c-i-t language in any dependent claim. It continues to astonish me, that drafters draft by rote, without thinking why they draft claims the way they do.MaxDreinoreply@blogger.com