Reference: Cover-up
ANOTHER DAY passes and the European Patent Office (EPO) is, as usual, breaking the law. It's also intentionally harming Europe while deflecting. There were no less than two "SME"-themed tweets from the EPO yesterday, citing its own 'sponsored' (bribed-for) 'studies'...
#3Dprinting #patenting
" as if to say it's desirable. Ask anyone who's in 3-D printing just to what extent patents in that domain suspended innovation and how long for (decades!) because it's a very well known case against patent maximalism/maximalists.
The European Patent Office, EPO, has taken the decision to allow another European patent for Episurf Medical (NASDAQ: EPIS B). The decision was taken at an oral proceeding at the EPO in Munich , Germany. The patent, entitled “System and method for creating a decision support material indicating damage to an anatomical joint” covers Episurf Medical’s 3D-based damage marking technology which constitutes a central part of the Episealer€® implant system as well as the Epioscopy€® joint visualisation system.
As to Alex Frost's "in no way of their own making" I wonder, whether that reminds anybody else but me of a case before Robin Jacob, in which the dispute with the Patent Office was about whether a document had indeed been filed at the Patent Office. Robin Jacob concluded that the representative was the author of Applicant's misfortune, pointing out that there was a good reason why the Patent Office issues receipts for docs filed and if the rep cannot be bothered to check them, any resulting misfortune is his own fault.
Can anybody recall the case reference?
Now that we have the EPO post grant limitation proceedings, I really don't know why we cannot have post-grant correction for any error. The EPO has the mechanisms to do this easily, and it should try to be more helpful to applicants/patentees
[...] I think the EPO has lost sight of the fact it needs to be more 'user-friendly' and it is becoming a place where mistakes have a disproportionate effect. We patent attorneys should not need to be professors or be capable of seeing a small error in 400 pages of description to do our routine job. Can we really say that third parties have been substantially disadvantaged by a patent proprietor reinserting pages into a specification which were clearly missing? It should be far simpler to correct errors, and should not need references to 3 or 4 TBA decisions. In particular the system should not be punitive in any way, which it seems to be whenever it says it was up to the applicant to get it right. As I say the EPO has forgotten it is providing a public service, and should be more user-friendly to its users
Re substance or composition Since A53(c) refers to "surgery or therapy", it follows that a substance or composition for use in such a method is not required to have a therapeutic effect if used in a method of surgery. The therapeutic effect case law arose under EPC1977 with regard to Swiss Type claims which related to pharmaceutical preparations. Accordingly, the previous case law should not be used to limit the meaning of the EPC after a change in the law.