Worthy of comment is a recent decision of EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal (March 25, 2015) in the cases Tomato II and Broccoli II (respectively, Case Number G2/12 here and Case Number G2/13 here). Both cases relate to the patentability of plants and plant matter under Article 53(b) EPC. The Tomato II case concerns a “method for breeding tomatoes having reduced water content and product of the method”, while the Broccoli II case concerns a “method for selective increase of the anticarcinogenic glucosinolates in brassica species”.

The EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal stated that even a product-by-process patent is a “product patent” autonomously protected from the process that describes the former and from which the implementation as product depends.

The EPO’s approach (see, in each decision: Reasons, Legal erosion of the exceptions to patentability,§ 6.(b), p.61) is open to criticism. On the one side it risks paralyzing the competitive dynamics of process innovation, in contrast an interpretation of articles 64(2) EPC and 34 TRIPs whereby third parties are allowed to make the same product with a totally different process—hence,   without any absolute block imposed by pre-existing product patents that are the fruit of a totally different intellectual process. On the other side, EPO’s opinion ‘forgets’ that in absence of that process, the product wouldn’t even exist, as the facts of the cases highlighted that no other processes were available to achieve the same result. The final outcome of said decisions is even more debatable as the process through which the product was described and claimed was essentially biological , thus as such non patentable: with the paradoxical ultimate result of allowing the patenting of a product that could be realized only through a process not patentable by definition!

Gustavo Ghidini

Gianluca De Cristofaro

EPO, Enlarged Board of Appeal, 25 March 2015, Case Number G2/12 and Case Number G 2/13, Tomato II and Broccoli II

updated on 12 November 2015