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ARTICLE · 19 DECEMBER 2025

Patent Round Up Report 2025

Lewis Silkin
Lewis Silkin
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Lewis Silkin

Lewis Silkin

Joint managing partners: Jo Farmer, Richard Miskella International offices: Dublin, Hong Kong...

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On 2nd July 2025 the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the European Patent Office (EPO) released its decision in referral G 1/23, in which it had to consider the prior art effect of putting a complex nonreproducible...

United KingdomIntellectual Property
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Paul Williams
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European Patent Office – Enlarged Board of Appeal round-up

"Far-fetched and utterly implausible"

Novelty: G 1/23 – "Solar Cell"

On 2nd July 2025 the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the European Patent Office (EPO) released its decision in referral G 1/23, in which it had to consider the prior art effect of putting a complex nonreproducible product on the market. According to earlier EBA decision G 1/92, the chemical composition of a product is state of the art when the product as such is available to the public and can be "analysed and reproduced" by the skilled person, irrespective of whether or not particular reasons can be identified for analysing the composition.

The case arose from opposition/appeal proceedings (appeal number T0438/19) in connection with European patent number 2626911. The opposition was rejected by the Opposition Division, which found that the invention involved an inventive step, against which finding the opponent appealed. The

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