Following the recent referral to the EPO's Enlarged Board of
Appeal, the EPO has issued a notice indicating that all pending
proceedings before the examination and opposition divisions at the
EPO, which depend entirely on the decision of the EBA, will be
stayed until the decision is issued. Therefore, applicants and
opponents should expect a long wait on some cases related to
simulation technology.
Specifically, the EPO advises that this stay of proceedings
concerns cases in which:
- the assessment of inventive step requires deciding whether or
not a computer-implemented simulation of a technical system or
process, claimed either as such or as part of a design process, can
be considered to produce a technical effect which goes beyond the
simulation's implementation on a computer (i.e. whether or not
the simulation achieved can itself qualify as a technical effect
for the purposes of assessing inventive step); and
