Talk:T 641/00

Neutral Point of View
The aThe The article violates the "neutral point of view" requirement, since it does not mention that the COMVIK decision is controversial. Ignoring allegedly non-technical features of the application is not allowed, since it is not allowed to list features that are irrelevant to the problem to be solved. Rbakels (talk) 07:56, 27 May 2023 (UTC)rt
 * In my understanding, the COMVIK approach is established case law of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, i.e. it is largely uncontroversial. See for example:
 * "(...) the established case law on computer-implemented inventions (COMVIK approach) (...)"
 * As far as I know, there is no sustained controversy in the literature about this approach. --Edcolins (talk) 14:14, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Practitioners have to follow the (EPO) Board of Appeal approach, and you are probably one of them. But the COMVIK approach is
 * actually against the law, see e.g. Axel von Hellfeld "Ist nur Technik Stand der Technik? - Zum neuen Neuheitsbegriff
 * im Europäischen Patentamt und dessen Anwendung auf rechnergestützte
 * Erfindungen", GRUR Int 2008, p. 1007 (English: "Is just technology state of the art? On the new novelty concpt in the EPO
 * and its application to computer implemented inventions".) Note that Board of Appeal decisions are no "case law" in the
 * regular sense, if only for the reason that the "members" of the boards of appeal are no independent judges, but reappointed every five years by the EPO.
 * It is acknowledged that the "COMVIK approach" while providing desired results for most business method patent applications,
 * gives counter-intuitive results for other types of inventions. For instance medicines typically are based on discoveries
 * (excluded by art. 52(2a) EPC) and make no other contribution.
 * The COMVIK approach pretends to comply with the requirement of an assessment "as a whole", but it actually does not since
 * it ignores features that are allegedly non-patentable by themselves. But a patent application may only claim features that
 * are needed to solve the problem at hand, so features are never irrelevant.
 * The EPO focus on the technical character/contribution is based on an exclusively German tradition - which is the reason that
 * it was not included in the initial EPC in 1973. EPC 2000 includes the phrase that patents are granted "in all fields of technology",
 * but that only means that no field of technology may be excluded. It definitely has that meaning in the TRIPS Agreement where it came from.
 * The Boards of Appeal argue that the four categories of subject-matter excluded by art. 52 EPC share a non-technical
 * character, but that is controversial, and e.g. not accepted by the British courts.
 * The latest development is that the COMVIK Approach actually obviates the need for an "invention concept" -
 * against all patent law traditions and legislation. This observation can actually be considered a "proof by contradiction" of the
 * incorrectness of the COMVIK Approach. Rbakels (talk) 12:07, 3 October 2023 (UTC)