Art 52 CPE: Interpretació i Revisió.

The reason given for the refusal was that the contribution to the art resided solely in a computer program as such within the meaning of Article 52 EPC, paragraphs 2(c) and Consequently, this subject-matter was not a patentable invention within the meaning of Article 52(1) EPC, in whatever form it was claimed.

In arriving at this conclusion the Examining Division argued on the basis that Claims 1 and 2 related to a method for automatically abstracting and storing an input document in an information storage and retrieval system and Claims 3-6 to a corresponding method for retrieving a document from the system. The claims specifically referred to a dictionary memory, input means, a main memory and a processor. These hardware elements were classical elements of an information and retrieval system (...) and objectionable under Article 54(2) EPC as lacking novelty. According to the present description (...) the method steps were implemented by programming such a classical system. The claimed combination of steps did not imply an unusual use of the individual hardware elements involved. The claims merely defined a collocation of known hardware and new software concerned with document information to be stored but not with an unexpected or unconventional way of operating the known hardware. The differences between the prior art and the subject-matter of the present application were defined by functions to be realised by a computer program which was used to implement a particular algorithm, or mathematical method, for analysing a document. In other words the steps of the method defined operations which were based on the content of the information and were independent of the particular hardware used.

In other words, a collocation of standard computing hardware with new computing rules (algorithms), in whatever form it is presented in the claim, would be excluded from patentability.

This was also clearly expressed in the Examination Guidelines of the European Patent Office of 1978.

However, in 1985 the Guidelines were revised and in particular the limits of patentability with respect to programs for computers were blurred. In two decisions of 1986, the EPO's Technical Board of Appeal reinterpreted the list of exclusions to mean that only "non-technical" innovations should be excluded, but refused to define "technical" -- a concept that was not mentioned in the law. From thereon the EPO embarked on a slippery slope by gradually widening the meaning of what could be understood to be "technical".

The EPO's reinterpretation of 1985/1986 and the subsequent loosening were criticised by law scholars such as Krasser, Benkard i Vivant and have led to a schism of judicial practise, which a new EU directive is supposed to overcome.

Veieu també BPatG 2002-03-26: Suche fehlerhafter Zeichenketten, Melullis 2002: Zur Sonderrechtsfähigkeit von Computerprogrammen i BGH-Entscheidung Betriebssystem 1990 : Entscheidung des 1. Zivilsenats des BGH zur Abgrenzung von Urheber- und Patentrecht: ein Betriebssystem ist kein technisches Programm

The decisions at the EPO were understood to have been taken "in response to pressure from the computer industry and trends emerging in the US".

Invencions patentables

Les patents europees hauràn de ser concedides als invents [ en tots els camps de la tecnològia ], sempre i quan aquests siguin nous, representin un avenç o sig+uin susceptibles de la seva aplicació industrial.

As a result of an uproar of public opinion, politicians from major countries prevented this planned change of Art 52. Yet the "Base Proposal" version was accepted as a new wording for Art 52(1), and Art 52(4) was deleted (whereby the concept of "industrial application" was further weakened).

Thus the revised version of Art 52 EPC, which is not yet in force, contains the TRIPs formula "in all fields of technology", but fails to define the new term "technology", which doesn't exist in the old EPC. Thus clause (2) seems relativised by an indeterminate concept from an international treaty. It would have been in the interest of clarity and legal security to concretise this concept, e.g. by explaining clearly what is to be understood by a "technical invention" and why algorithms, business methods and rules for operating known data processing equipment do not belong into this category. Instead the legislators opted for introducing indeterminate concepts and potential contradictions into the law, which are then likely to be resolved by putting the appositive "as such" from 52(3) in quotes to make it appear mysterious and unclear, so as to allow the patent judiciary to rely on its own favored interpretation of "fields of technology" or even to point to alleged WTO constraints, thus giving up the clarity and integrity of national law in favor of arbitrary decisionmaking by the international patent lawyer community.

Art 52(4) about surgery on the human body was "only" reworded and moved to Art 53. This however implies that surgery methods are no longer considered to be non-inventions, non-technical or non-industrial. In this way, the Diplomatic Conference further weakened the TRIPs concepts on which it decided to rely for limiting patentability.

En réalité, les règles nationales et conventionnelles sont claires: elles posent sans équivoque un principe de non-brevetabilité du logiciel. Le jeu qui se joue aujourd'hui consiste à contourner d'une manière ou d'une autre celles-ci, par exemple en imaginant de considérer, comme on l'a vu, l'ensemble constitué par le matériel et le logiciel comme une machine virtuelle susceptible (demain ...) d'être breveteée. À ce compte-là, on peut parler brevets. Les brevets susceptibles d'être ainsi obtenus, par ce canal ou un autre, n'ont, toutefois, que la valeur qu'on leur prête - mais il ne faut pas écarter l'hypothèse selon laquelle on finirait par une sorte de consensus à ne pas vraiment la discuter. De fait, l'efficacité de ce countournement des règles légales sera largement fonction du fait qu'un tel consensus se dégagera pour accepter --- contre les règles positives --- que ce nouveau jeu se joue ou non. La question ne se situe plus sur le terrain juridique stricto sensu.

Després d'un intens debat públic resulta que la norma legal actual és l'adequada i que la jurisprudència recent de l'OEP contradiu tan la llei com l'interés públic. Cal cridar els tribunals a corregir la seva pràctica actual i aplicar la llei.

The European Parliament has passed an amended directive which reconfirms the system of Art 52 EPC and makes it more explicit. Frits Bolkestein and some people in the Council do not like this clarification and propose to opt instead for a revision of the EPC or some other kind of inter-governmental agreement. The UK Patent Office has proposed to rewrite Art 52(3) in a way that allows anything deemed "technical" to be patented. On the other hand it would also be possible to concretise Art 52 EPC itself further in the spirit of the amended directive. Putting positive definitions of "technical field", "technology", "industry" etc, as found in the amended directive, into Art 52ff EPC or its national versions could become a way of implementing the directive.

Proposem opcionalment d'esborrar l'apartat 3 de l'article 52 perquè és purament explicatiu i no agrega cap significat a l'article. El seu lloc és al reglament d'examen de sol·licituds de patents. Suprimir-lo de la llei seria una manera convenient de dir als tribunals que tornin a la interpretació correcta de la llei, que era la predominant durant els anys 70/80.