Dalla decisione del BoA dell’ufficio europeo, 16 marzo 2023, caso n° T 1924/ 20 – 3.5.03 (ne dà notizia Rose Hughes il 10 aprile u.s su IPKat):
<< 2.7 The respondent’s line of argumentation regarding E1’s
disclosure and inventive step concerning claim 8 hinged
upon a claim construction that was based on the
description of the opposed patent. The board holds such
a line of argumentation to be not convincing, given its
conviction that a skilled reader of a patent claim
would, for many reasons, interpret the claims based
essentially on their own merits (see e.g. T 2764/19,
Reasons 3.1.1; T 1127/16, Reasons 2.6.1). This is
because the “subject-matter of the European
patent” (cf. Article 100(a) EPC) is defined by the
claims and only by them. The description and drawings
are, however, typically used by the deciding body to
determine the above-mentioned “skilled reader” and,
hence, the view point from which the claims are
interpreted. This means that, when interpreting the
claims, the description and drawings cannot be relied
on as a sort of fall-back or supplementary-guidance
tool for filling up gaps or for resolving
inconsistencies in a claim to the patent proprietor’s
advantage. Such a reliance on the description and the
drawings by the patent proprietor will normally fail to
convince>>.
Qui il link diretto al pdf della decisione.
SEcondo il ns. art. 52.2 c.p.i. e il 69 della Conv. Europea (EPC), il ruolo della descrizione è solo interpretativo: <<The extent of the protection conferred by a European patent or a European patent application shall be determined by the claims. Nevertheless, the description and drawings shall be used to interpret the claims >>.