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Société des Produits Nestle S.A.

T 0690/04-3.3.09 (2007)

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Société des Produits Nestle S.A.

European Patent Office Board of Appeals
T 0690/04-3.3.09 (2007)

RW

Facts

Pursuant to the European Patent Convention (EPC), the European Patent Office (EPO) issued a European patent to Société des Produits Nestle S.A. (Nestle) (defendant). The patent protected Nestle’s process for making probiotics-enriched pet food. Mars UK and another food-products company (plaintiffs) commenced a so-called opposition proceeding to revoke the patent. The two companies presented evidence to the EPO’s appellate board showing that (1) Nestle’s process employed the same key features used to make a probiotics-enriched pet food that was marketed several years before Nestle filed its patent application; (2) a skilled person could infer how the earlier product was made from what that product contained; (3) the earlier product’s packaging labeled the product’s ingredients; and (4) even without that labeling, a skilled person could identify the earlier product’s ingredients through routine chemical analysis.

Rule of Law

Issue

Holding and Reasoning ()

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