Tuesday, June 20, 2017 T 2456/12 & T 0059/13 - Interpretation by the skilled persion

In two recent decisions in opposition appeal, the Board addressed how the skilled person interprets the claims. In interpreting the claims for assessing novelty and inventive step, the Board refers to established case law and emphasizes that "the patent must be construed by a mind willing to understand, not a mind desirous of misunderstanding" and that "the skilled person should try with synthetical propensity, to arrive at an interpretation which is technically sensible and takes into account the whole of the disclosure of a patent". 

Tuesday, March 21, 2017 T 0396/14 - Meaningful interpretation of claim by skilled person

What is the upper end of this range?

Granted claim 1 in this case contains the step 'positioning an upper end of the retransmission window'. Unfortunately, the description does not contain a clear definition of what the upper end is, and in fact the term only occurs a few times in the summary of the invention. Furthermore, with a (according to the opposition division) conventional understanding of the upper end, the claims would not work. The granted claims were then revoked for being insufficiently disclosed. 

The board gives more credit to the skilled person to come to a working embodiment that falls under the terms of the claims, then the opposition division did.