European Patent Office Decision of the Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.1 of 26 September 2002

Case Number: T 641/00-3.5.1 (2002)

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European Patent Office Decision of the Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.1 of 26 September 2002

European Patent Office Technical Board of Appeal
Case Number: T 641/00-3.5.1 (2002)

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Facts

Comvik GSM AB (Comvik) (defendant) provided its customers with multiple applications associated with Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technology. Comvik encountered difficulty in allocating service costs and charges among each customer’s various GSM subscriptions. Experts in the field of GSM technology understood that resolving such difficulties required adapting a cell phone’s subscriber identity module (SIM) to distinguish between one GSM application and another. Comvik devised a method for equipping each SIM card with multiple identities selectively activated by the cell phone’s user. The European Patent Office (EPO) patented Comvik’s innovation. However, when another company (plaintiff) complained, the relevant EPO opposition division revoked Comvik’s patent. The opposition division found that Comvik’s patented method solved Comvik’s financial and administrative problems but that the technical features of Comvik’s solution derived in a straightforward way from the prior art and required only minor technical modifications. Comvik appealed the opposition division’s revocation to an EPO technical board of appeal.

Rule of Law

Issue

Holding and Reasoning ()

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