Current Version
A lot of people keep asking where the current version is. Usually pointing to http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/europarl0309/cons0401/ and to this kwiki page is a good choice because we put a pointer to the most current version which we have there.
Contributions Assumed to be Non-Obvious
Q&A
Question
First part of Council Art 2b says:'"technical contribution" means a contribution to the state of the art in a field of technology which is not obvious to a person skilled in the art.' Can a contribution not be obvious?
Answer
According to recent EPO doctrines, which the Council Paper uses, the "technical contribution" is just an aspect of the problem which must be constructed as part of the "inventive step" (non-obviousness) test, and this aspect itself is not subject to any non-obviousness test. The EPO's recent guidelines even explicitely state that the "technical contribution" itself needn't be new or non-obvious, and indeed that follows from the approach that the Council has taken. So we have here another contradiction.
