Translation of "Prioritätszeitpunkt" in English

At the priority date, the recombinant expression of genes from higher eucaryots had already been achieved.

Stationary helium-cooled transformers were already known at the date of priority.

Clipstream® is protected by seven pending US patents claiming priority to August 2011 and international PCT filings.

The fact that this description later turned out to be wrong could not affect the sufficiency of the disclosure at the priority date.

Such evidence would not document the state of the art at the time of priority and is therefore not relevant to the assessment of sufficient disclosure.

The Board also recognises that its conclusion about the inventive character of the claimed subject-matter is confirmed by the circumstances in the art, before and after the priority date.

On the date of priority of the application, it was impossible to fabricate even an experimental transformer of this type.

In fact, when examining for inventive step, the state of the art must be assessed from the point of view of the man skilled in the art at the time of priority relevant for the application.

Neither the feature of providing a retaining flange on a pre-formed part of a pipe nor the jointing of an aged pre-formed part to a fresh one were therefore in themselves new at the time of the priority date of the application.

The essence of the claim as granted had been part of the prior art at the priority date and so was not novel.

It was pointed out that the results presented in the patent in suit were obtained using the best machine available at the priority date and the best judgement of the operators of the machine to interpret the data.

The term “substantially free” is intended to connote that the particular material is not detected (i.e. is below the detection limit) using standard commercial tests and methodologies used in the industry as of the earliest priority date of this application.

The most important factor for the interpretation of a patent is the skilled person's perspective and his knowledge of the prior art on the filing or priority date.

The DPMA interprets this provision to mean that 15 months from the priority date is the relevant maximum period for applications claiming priority.

Its decision held that all the claims of the patent were entitled only to the European filing date, not to the claimed priority date, because the figure 5 in the feature "at least 5% by weight of oil or fat" contained in each independent claim (and therefore also in the dependent claims) could not be derived from the priority document, and constituted subject-matter added to the specification after the priority date.

The Examining Division insisted that all embodiments in the claims must have been capable of being carried out by the skilled person at the priority date and in a repeatable manner without practising inventive skill.

What therefore had to be decided was whether the technical teaching of the patent at issue would have been obvious to the skilled person from the cited prior-art documents at the priority date.

In the view of the Board this indicates that over a long period of time there was no motive for breaking away from the oxygen-blowing process which had been successfully introduced and moreover involved expensive plant of long service life, and that the need for the appellant's method which from the present-day point of view is environmentally innocuous arose relatively shortly before the date of priority of the present application.

Claims should, in effect, at least be limited to what is available at the priority date, i.e. known bacteria, plasmids and DNA relating to known polypeptides.

It was, however, by no means clear at the priority date of the present application how this could be directly and efficiently achieved.

In T 967/97 the board stated that the problem and solution approach was essentially based on actual knowledge of technical problems and ways to solve them technically that the skilled person would, at the priority date, be expected to possess objectively, i.e. without being aware of the patent application and the invention that it concerned.

D16 was not relevant as it was of no significance whether high-temperature superconductors had been commercially exploitable on the date of priority.

In particular Respondents (3) argued that document (A) was reviewed inter alia by Professor Gilbert so that it is likely that he agreed to the content of document (A) in such a way that this content was already presented at the mentioned symposium which took place before the priority date of the patent in suit.

It is therefore clear that neither of the required starting materials of the Dow patent, CCMP or CCCMP, can be assumed to be properly available to the skilled person at the priority date of the patent.

At the time of the priority date only one method to recover desired heterologous proteins, expressed by bacterial cells was available and this method was to destroy the bacterial cell by lysis or disruption.

The applicant's argument, namely that the relevant version of standard is the version at the priority date of the application, does not convince the Board of Appeal because the application has not mentioned this fact.

In the case of second-medical-use claims, if the claimed therapeutic effect was already known to the skilled person at the priority date, it was not necessary to demonstrate it in the application.

The CAFC confirms that the sufficient disclosure is to be judged on the basis of the prior art at the time of priority.

What had to be established above all was what that skilled person would have understood from the prior-art documents at the priority date (Supreme Court, 17Ob4/11d).

As they were much more sensitive and sophisticated it was not surprising that the results obtained using them were not exactly the same as those obtained using the machines available at the priority date.