T 1996/20 - A blog post as prior art

Key points

• In what has a distinct EQE Paper C vibe: "Document D4 is a disclosure made available on the internet in the form of a blog entry published at a certain date followed by a series of user comments posted at a later point in time. In the present case, the board has no doubt that the content of the blog entry dated 15 June 2013 ("2013 06/15") as well as the first three comments on page 6/7 of 16 June 2013 and 10 October 2013 were made available to the public before the priority date of the patent in suit, i.e. before 29 January 2014. With the exclusion of the last five comments of pages 6/7 and 7/7, posted between 3 December 2014 and 16 March 2016, document D4 therefore constitutes prior art under Article 54(2) EPC." 
• " D4 - "Lexan: The 3D-Printer build platform of the future", dated between 15 June 2013 and 16 March 2016, retrieved from the internet (http://www.akeric.com/blog/?p=2158);|" 
• The claim is found to be obvious over the blog post in combination with a patent document D5, it seems with the teaching of a single paragraph of D5 and some dependent claims. 
• "  In the board's view, the skilled person would not have ignored this clear and unambiguous teaching in document D5. This explicit solution to the objective technical problem would have prompted the skilled person to modify the substrate, i.e. the flexible Lexan sheet, of document D4 by texturing its top surface. In so doing, the skilled person would have arrived at the subject-matter of claim 1 of the patent as granted. Hence, the claimed subject-matter is obvious." 
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• The rest of the decision is also interesting, including a discussion of the permitted role of post-published documents under inventive step as evidence of common general knowledge, technical prejudice, "one of many feasible solutions"  and long-felt need. 
• " The appellant's submissions concerning the "dominant thinking" and the "prejudice" at the time of filing seem to miss the point that document D4, the starting point for the inventive step assessment, already discloses an alternative to the Kapton tape, the blue painter's tape and the hairspray, namely a build plate consisting of a flat sheet of flexible material"
• " It may very well be that the textured top surface is just one of several different feasible solutions to the objective technical problem. But it is the only solution to the problem offered by document D5."
•   " The board does not dispute the appellant's argument that producers of 3D printers at the time the application for the patent in suit was filed relied on Kapton foil, blue painter's tape or hairspray. Documents D14 and D17 are proof thereof. However, this does not imply a long-felt need that was overcome by the claimed invention and that is therefore indicative of an inventive step." 
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EPO 

The link to the decision is provided after the jump, as well as (an extract of) the text of the decision.

https://www.epo.org/en/boards-of-appeal/decisions/t201996eu1

Document D4

3. Document D4 is a disclosure made available on the internet in the form of a blog entry published at a certain date followed by a series of user comments posted at a later point in time. In the present case, the board has no doubt that the content of the blog entry dated 15 June 2013 ("2013 06/15") as well as the first three comments on page 6/7 of 16 June 2013 and 10 October 2013 were made available to the public before the priority date of the patent in suit, i.e. before 29 January 2014. With the exclusion of the last five comments of pages 6/7 and 7/7, posted between 3 December 2014 and 16 March 2016, document D4 therefore constitutes prior art under Article 54(2) EPC.

4. The appellant did not contest the selection of document D4 as a starting point for the inventive step assessment, nor did it challenge the opposition division's finding that features 1.1 to 1.6 and 1.9 were known in combination from document D4. The board has no reason to doubt these findings. Indeed, the author of the internet disclosure recounts their experience with a sheet of flexible "Lexan" material as build surface on a 3D printer. A textured top surface is not disclosed by document D4. Since the purpose clause of feature 1.8 is linked to the textured top surface of feature 1.7, both features 1.7 and 1.8 must be regarded as distinguishing features with respect to document D4.