Monday, January 20, 2020 Breaking news - Decision in case T 844/18 on the CRISPR gene editing technology

Last week, oral proceedings took place in T 844/18 on the CRISPR gene editing technology and a decision was taken at the end of the oral proceedings. On Friday, the news message below was posted on the EPO website.

Wednesday, April 17, 2019 T 0725/14 - Valid transfer of rights results in invalid priority claim

If during the priority year a European patent application - filed by applicant A - is transferred to a party B, is then the priority claim from a subsequent application (from which the patent in suit matured) by applicant A to the earlier application valid? Which acts and statements, including their timing, constitute the transfer of a priority right between parties? And what role do the parties' intentions - as far as they can be derived from the documents on file - play in this?

Friday, September 21, 2018 T 525/13 - Generalizing from US provisional application

Cat on Microwave

This opposition appeal illustrates the limitations when claiming priority from a US provisional application. While a 'manual cook button' is considered to be implicitly, yet unambiguously and directly derivable from the US provisional application, the claimed microprocessor was considered to represent a different invention as the US provisional application only described a microcomputer.

(In this case, the Board also considers an alleged substantial procedural violations to be merely "a number of unfortunate events", which was communicated by the Board to the parties earlier:

"... it appears to the Board that the alleged substantial violations are rather to be seen as a number of unfortunate events. It is in particular unfortunate that the opposition division did not react sooner to the special request of the representative of the appellant. On the other hand the Board cannot read from the appellant's letter of 13 December 2012 that if the EPO would not be able to accommodate the representative of the appellant, she would not be able EPO Form 3350 6/7T0525/13-3.5.02 to attend the oral proceedings. It is also unfortunate that the respondent, even though there is no legal obligation to do so, did not forward a copy of its submission of 13 December 2012 directly to the appellant, knowing that the appellant would have to obtain a translation and that it would not be unlikely that the letter was not received by the appellant from the EPO before the Christmas holidays. Finally it is standard practice that examiners do not speak directly with a party in inter partes proceedings and all communication with the EPO goes via the formalities officer.")

Tuesday, May 29, 2018 EP2771468 - Decision of OD in Crispr case (first instance)

You can't slice up a priority right

Today we have the  first instance decision in the opposition against European patent 2771468 having the title "ENGINEERING OF SYSTEMS, METHODS AND OPTIMIZED GUIDE COMPOSITIONS FOR SEQUENCE MANIPULATION" (PCT/US13/74819). The grounds for the decision were published 26 March 2018.


We usually only have  board of appeal decisions, but I'm told this is an important case as it relates to the CRISPR technique of DNA manipulation. It is moreover interesting because of its scale and the issues it raises. There were 9 opponents, 255 documents filed, 72 auxiliary request and a 40-page decision.

The priority documents are US provisionals and each have a number of natural persons as inventors/applicants. I count a total of 12 different natural persons who are applicants to the priority documents in various combinations. It turns out that for some of these persons the priority rights had not been transferred to an applicant of the PCT application, or at least evidence of a transfer acceptable to the OD was not filed.  As a result, the priority claim was objected to the by the opponents. The proprietors have numerous arguments why this objection should not be allowed, but in the end the priority claim is not accepted. Because of the invalid priority, the patent was found not novel.

The underlying problem appears to be hidden in reasons 75-75.1: one of the inventor/applicants of the provisional was not an inventor in the sense of the US law. Accordingly, his successor in title was left of the PCT application, probably to satisfy US law. That one of the persons, who is not an inventor, misses as an applicant on the PCT application now appears to doom this patent in Europe.

Notice of appeal has already been filed, so we'll be interested to see how this case progresses.  

Tuesday, December 05, 2017 J 3/17 - Buggy monitoring system

A (Lego) bug...

In the present case, a PCT patent application was filed after expiry of the 12m priority period at the Chinese PCT receiving office by an Chinese agent acting as representative of the appellant.

The appellant filed a request for restoration of the right to priority with the European Patent Office as designated Office, which was refused by decision of the Receiving Section (whereas the request was submitted to and granted by the Chinese PCT receiving office under the 'unintentional' criterion).

The appellant now appeals before the EPO, and argues that 'all due care' has been taken.

Of interest in this case was that because of a bug that had up to then never been discovered, the electronic system which was used by the Chinese agent had given a reminder of the filing date only, not the priority deadline date. Unfortunately (for the appellant, but also for the interested reader), the appeal failed already on other reasons for not satisfying 'all due care', without going into detail on the implications of 'buggy' software wreaking havoc with otherwise carefully defined procedures.

Friday, March 10, 2017 T 1434/13 - When priority becomes important: D1 is published in the priority year

 

Fig. 2 of D1 (WO2006/095202)

Only in few number cases the right to priority is extensively examined - in general only if there is prior art that has been published in the priority year. In this opposition appeal there was a document on file (D1) that was published in the priority year of the disputed patent. An interesting thing to mention is that document D1 is a PCT application of the same applicant as the owner of the disputed patent. In the opposition proceedings, the Division decided that the patent did not enjoy the right of priority from the two priority documents and, thus, that the claim as granted lacked novelty. In this appeal, the Board repeated the work of the Opposition Division. The Board wrote down an interesting reasoning because different aspects played a role: features were disclosed in the figures, features were not disclosed as a whole in a single embodiment and it seems that essential elements of the priority documents are not the claims (in other words: the priority documents disclose different inventions).