Definitions of Technical Contribution

An invention is a contribution to the state of the art. The contribution is the set of features by which the claimed object is claimed to differ from the prior art. This set of features must at the same time fulfill all the patentability criteria. This is intuitively and in the law tradition how the terms have been used and it should normally not need any confirmation in legislation. But the EPO people have confounded the notions and are trying to impose these confounded notions. The Council has followed the EPO only incompletely, because hardly anyone understands the EPO notions. Provisions such as Art 2b provide an opportunity to set things straight. It is not necessary to define "technical" within Art 2b, neither positively nor negatively.

no.	submitted by	vote	critique
25	Rocard	+	Disentangles "contribution" from inventive step.
57 62 63	Mastenbroek, Lichtenberger; Kudrycka, Zwiefka; Bertinotti	++	gets an essential clarification right: contribution is the new part and that this part must fulfill the requirements of patentability.
58	Szejna	o	Corrects an error of the Council (according to which the "contribution" may consist entirely of non-technical features), but fails to clarify the position of the contribution in the system of patentability examination.
59	Lichtenberger, Frassoni	+	The intention to define "technical" by "forces of nature" and to exclude software is commendable, but this amendment fails to clarify the function of the "contribution" in the system of patentability criteria. It would be better to define "technical" somewhere else.
60	Ortega	++	makes it clear that forces of nature must be part of the contribution and that the contribution should be construed narrowly from the novel features. Based on 1st reading, leaves room for possible compromise in Conciliation.
61	Kauppi	++	makes it clear that forces of nature must be part of the contribution and that the contribution should be construed narrowly from the novel features. Based on 1st reading, leaves room for possible compromise in Conciliation.
64	McCarthy	+	The intention to define "technical" by "forces of nature" and to exclude software is commendable, but this amendment fails to clarify the function of the "contribution" in the system of patentability criteria. It would be better to define "technical" somewhere else.
65	Gauzés	+	Rectifies EPO error, correctly disentangles contribution from non-obviousness, but apart from that does not clarify much.
205	Lehne	-	even less helpful than the Council version: long sentence with syntactic ambiguities, refers to new undefined concepts, fails to answer question of how contribution relates to claim object as a whole and which conditions of patentability it must meet.
229	Lichtenberger, Frassoni	-	The recital is a meaningless apologetic text which tries to make existing tautological limitations on patentability appear significant. The amended text seems indistinguishable from the original. Something must have gone wrong during submission of this amendment.

25

57

58

59

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61

62

63

64

65

205

229