Referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeal

Recent diverging decisions by the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office have led the President of the EPO, Mrs. Alison BRIMELOW, to refer a point of law to the Enlarged Board of Appeal.

The referral, dated Wednesday 22 October 2008, invites the Enlarged Board of Appeal to clarify how the exclusion for programs for computers in Article 52(2) and (3) EPC is to be interpreted. More specifically, the questions referred relate to the relevance of the claim category for the applicability of the exclusion, to clarify when a claim as a whole falls under the exclusion, to what extend individual features of the claim contribute to the technical character, and a question concerning the activity (the programming) underlying the resulting (computer) product.