Adding pepper to a tomato and broccoli salad

At this time, all readers are probably already aware of the issuance of opinion G 3/19 of the Enlarged Board of Appeal on May 14, 2020.

I know, twelve days is a long time in the internet era.

But trust me, Lionel Vial’s below report on this topic is worth reading.  Lionel loves making predictions, and his forecast on plants and animals obtained by essentially biological processes is that this hot topic is not about to cool down and that we are in for ongoing legal controversy – and possibly one or more future referrals.  

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Here is Lionel’s report.

As this blog has consistently strained to keep pace with the seemingly never ending developments regarding the patentability of plant and animals obtained by essentially biological processes, as reported here, here and here, we felt compelled to comment on opinion G 3/19 of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO, which was rendered on May 14, 2020.

To make a long story short, G 3/19 (Pepper) follows from a referral pursuant to Article 112(1)(b) EPC of the President of the EPO, itself following from decision T 1063/18 of Board of Appeal 3.3.04 of December 5, 2018, which decided that in accordance with Article 164(2) EPC, the interpretation of Article 53(b) EPC by the EBA in decisions G 2/12 (Tomatoes II) and G 2/13 (Broccoli II) prevailed over Rule 28(2) EPC.

In other words the Board of Appeal decided plants and animals obtained by essentially biological processes were not to be considered exceptions to patentability pursuant to Article 53(b) EPC in spite of Rule 28(2) EPC, which was introduced by a Decision of the Administrative Council of June 29, 2017 and entered into force on July 1, 2017. Rule 28(2) EPC provides that under Article 53(b) EPC, European patents shall not be granted in respect of plants or animals exclusively obtained by means of an essentially biological process.

There are two parts in opinion G 3/19, a part which relates to institutional provisions and a part which relates to substantive provisions.

Turning first to the substantive part of the opinion, which directly impacts daily practice at the EPO, the EBA, adopting a “dynamic interpretation” of Article 53(b) EPC for the circumstance, has abandoned the interpretation of Article 53(b) EPC given in decision G 2/12 and G 2/13, in the light of Rule 28(2) EPC.

As a consequence, this new understanding of Article 53(b) EPC has a negative effect on the allowability of product claims or product-by-process claims directed to plants, plant material or animals, if the claimed product is exclusively obtained by means of an essentially biological process or if the claimed process features define an essentially biological process.

It is to be noted that the EBA goes beyond the wording of Rule 28(2) EPC and also excludes plant material exclusively obtained by means of an essentially biological process. This may call for future clarification (see below).

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Besides, in order to ensure legal certainty and to protect the legitimate interests of patent proprietors and applicants, the Enlarged Board ruled that the new interpretation of Article 53(b) EPC given in G 3/19 has no retroactive effect on European patents containing such claims which were granted before July 1, 2017, when Rule 28(2) EPC entered into force, or on pending European patent applications seeking protection for such claims which were filed or have a priority date before that date.

This contradicts the Decision of the Administrative Council which provided in its Article 3 that Rule 28(2) EPC applied to European patent applications filed on or after July 1, 2017, as well as to European patent applications and European patents pending at that time.

At this stage of the post, we should self-congratulate for having foreseen in our previous post on the subject of July 3, 2017 that the consequence of the Decision of the Administrative Council would be that plants and animals exclusively obtained by means of an essentially biological process are exceptions to patentability, but that the new Rule 28(2) EPC could not apply to patents and applications filed before July 1, 2017. However, to be frank, at that time we had not anticipated that a Board of Appeal would refuse to apply Rule 28(2) EPC pursuant to Article 164(2) EPC because it was in contradiction with the interpretation of Article 53(b) given by the EBA.

This brings us to the institutional part of the opinion of the EBA.

The EBA does not consider that there would be a general prohibition on adopting secondary legislation [by the Administrative Council] which concerns the interpretation of a provision of primary legislation given by itself (see point XXV.3.1).

Besides, the EBA considers that the exception to patentability brought by Rule 28(2) EPC is not incompatible with the wording of Article 53(b), which does not rule out this broader construction of the term “essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals” and that Rule 28(2) EPC could be considered to reflect the Contracting States’ intention to give a special meaning to that term (see point XXVI.6).

As such, the new Rule 28(2) EPC has to be taken into account in the dynamic interpretation of Article 53(b) as seen above.

It follows that the content of Rule 28(2) EPC does not stand in contradiction with the new interpretation of Article 53(b) EPC given by the EBA and that there is no conflict between these provisions. Hence, Article 164(2) EPC is not relevant (see point XXVII of the opinion).

As far as we are concerned, we are not sure if it was ever the initial intent of those who drafted the EPC to have the substantive patent law provisions of the EPC, especially Chapter I Patentability, interpreted by the Implementing Regulation, but let’s not be more Catholic than the pope.

So, is this the end of tomatoes, broccoli or pepper decisions? Let us take another bet here: No, in our opinion, other questions will need to be answered by the Boards of appeal of the EPO and perhaps by the EBA.

Here is a short list, probably not exhaustive, of likely questions:

• • • • Can parts of plants, such as fruits, be considered to be exclusively obtained by means of an essentially biological process?
      • Are plants or animals which are obtained by means of an essentially biological process but which can also be obtained by a non-essentially biological process exceptions to patentability?
      • Are plants or animals which are obtained by a process comprising an essentially biological process and a further step of a technical nature which does not serve to enable or assist the performance of the steps of sexually crossing the whole genomes of plants or of subsequently selecting plants exceptions to patentability?

Eventually, this leads us to our concluding riddle: After tomatoes, broccoli and pepper, what will be the name of the plant attached to the next decision, or opinion, of the EBA?

CASE REFERENCE: Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office, G 3/19, May 14, 2020, Pepper (follow-up to “Tomatoes II” and “Broccoli II”).

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