During the UNION Round Table of February 27, 2015 in Munich Ricardo Dijkstra lectured about sufficiency and clarity in patent law. The meeting titled “Insufficiently clear and Clearly insufficient?” was attended by more than 140 patent attorneys, patent agents and patent judges.
Broadest possible patents and maximum legal security. Clarity of patent claims is a formal requirement that puts public interests against patent owners’ desire for maximum protection. Is there an adequate midpoint that balances the interests of third parties and patent owners? Discrepancies between the claims and specification can have potentially lethal consequences in litigation proceedings, as the famous Occlutech case has shown. Should the responsibility for clear claims, therefore, be left entirely to the patent owner? At the UNION Round Table the pros and cons of clarity objections both in examination proceedings as well as in validity proceedings were discussed from EPO and national perspectives.
Ricardo’s presentation can be found here.