Inventive step under the European Patent Convention information
Concept in patent law
Legal requirements applicable to European patent applications and patents
Patentable subject-matter (Article 52)
Novelty (Article 54)
Inventive step (Article 56)
Industrial applicability (Article 57)
Unity of invention (Article 82)
Disclosure of the invention (Article 83)
Claims (Article 84)
Amendments (Article 123)
Note: The above list of legal requirements is not exhaustive.
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Under the European Patent Convention (EPC), European patents shall be granted for inventions which inter alia involve an inventive step.[1] The central legal provision explaining what this means, i.e. the central legal provision relating to the inventive step under the EPC, is Article 56 EPC. That is, an invention, having regard to the state of the art, must not be obvious to a person skilled in the art. The Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) have developed an approach, called the "problem-and-solution approach", to assess whether an invention involves an inventive step.[2]
^Article 52(1) EPC
^Knesch, G. "Assessing Inventive Step in Examination and Opposition Proceedings in the EPO" (PDF). epi Information (3/1994): 95–101. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 16 August 2015.
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