EPO is becoming stricter and stricter about added subject-matter
Many recent sentences of the EPO broad of appeal (i.e.: T 2242/ 13) show that the European Patent Office is becoming stricter and stricter about added subject-matter (Art. 123(2) EPC). Therefore, it is always more difficult to extract features from the description to add them to the claims during the substantial examination.
For example it is not possible to generalize a concept or a feature which is expressed in an embodiment of the description, even if the generalization is obvious to the skilled man, it is a so called intermediate generalization. It is also not possible to connect features taken from different embodiments of the description.
To avoid objection based on Art. 123(2) EPC we always suggest to:
• always express any specific feature before in a general way, and then specify the preferred embodiment,
• never express two or more future in the same sentence: each feature a separate sentence,
• always try to connect different embodiments each other, specifying that the specific features of a specific embodiment may be used in the other embodiments.