Inventions Consisting in A Mixture of Technical and Non-technical Features
An invention may consist in a mixture of technical and non-technical features. In such cases, the EPO generally applies the so-called "Comvik approach" (cf. T 641/00) to assess whether the invention involves an inventive step. In the "Comvik approach", any non-technical feature, i.e. a feature from a field excluded from patentability under Article 52(2) and (3) EPC, is ignored for the assessment of inventive step, unless the non-technical features do interact with the technical subject-matter to solve a technical problem. Assessing whether or not a feature contributes to the technical character of a claim has been viewed as difficult.
Read more about this topic: Inventive Step Under The European Patent Convention
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—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
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