Date of the Decision:
2003-11-27
Catchword:
- The term “state of the art” in Article 54 EPC should, in
compliance with the French and German text, be understood as “state of
technology”, which in the context of the EPC does not include the
state of the art in commerce and business methods. The term
“everything” in Article 54(2) EPC is to be understood as concerning
such kind of information which is relevant to some field of technology.
- From these considerations it follows that anything which is not
related to any technological field or field from which, because of its
informational character, a skilled person would expect to derive any
technically relevant information, does not belong to the state of the
art to be considered in the context of Articles 54 and 56, even if it
had been made available to the general public before the relevant
priority date (see points 8 to 10 of the reasons).
