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COMVIK: Features That Cannot Support Inventive Step

Written from T 0641/00 (COMVIK), a decision of an EPO Board of Appeal. Current as of 22 August 2026. This site has no European or UK practitioner.

What it says

Where an invention mixes technical and non-technical features and has technical character as a whole, inventive step is assessed by taking account of the features that contribute to that technical character. Features contributing nothing to it cannot support inventive step.

European practice does not throw out an invention because part of it is a business idea. It does something more consequential.

An invention with a mixture of technical and non-technical features, which has technical character as a whole, is assessed for inventive step on the features that contribute to that technical character. Features contributing nothing to it cannot support inventive step. They are not removed from the claim; they simply cannot do the work of establishing that the invention was not obvious.

Then the sharper half. Where the claim refers to an aim in a non-technical field, that aim may legitimately appear in the formulation of the technical problem the invention is taken to solve.

That is why the framing is more consequential than an exclusion would be. A business requirement does not disqualify a claim, and it also does not help it, and it can be treated as part of the problem the skilled person was handed.

What This Does Not Decide

Which of your features are technical is the question, and this page cannot answer it. This is a decision applying a test, which makes it the most application-shaped material here, and there is no European practitioner behind this site. Describing how the analysis runs is as far as a page can honestly go.
  • It does not say whether any feature is technical, or whether a claim would survive.
  • It is not guidance on how to frame a problem or draft around the analysis. That is drafting, for a jurisdiction this site has no practitioner in.
  • It is an EPO Board of Appeal decision, not a national court ruling, and not United States law.

Educational, not legal advice. Take anything that matters to a European or UK attorney.

Sources