T 1350/22 - A cursory search by the Board

Key points

•  This is an examination appeal case.
• "The decision [of the Examining Division] was based on the ground that the independent claims of the main request and the first to third auxiliary requests were not clear (Article 84 EPC)."
• The requirements of novelty and inventive step were not examined by the Examining Division. They were considered by the EPO as ISA, as we will see.
• "The examining division objected that rendering image plus depth data for a volumetric display was not supported by the application as filed"  
• "The board finds that the objection raised by the examining division is not justified for the following reasons. "
• " Item V of the written opinion of the international searching authority [the EPO, incidentally] contained a perfunctory statement that "[a]t present, it appears that the set of claims is novel and inventive over the prior art D1"."
• " Contrary to the statement in the written opinion of the international searching authority, the board finds that the subject-matter of claim 1 of the main request does not involve an inventive step within the meaning of Article 56 EPC for the following reasons."
•  A cursory search for the subject-matter of the independent claims of the main request [by the Board] resulted in documents D2 and D3, which rendered the subject-matter of these claims obvious."" 
• "The subject-matter of claim 1 of the fourth to tenth auxiliary requests specify further details regarding the amount of blurring in a transition between a first region and a second region. To examine these further details, a search beyond the cursory one will be necessary, which is the responsibility of the department of first instance (see also T 1241/17, Reasons 7.6 and 9, and T 1227/19, Reasons 6.1 and 6.4)."

EPO 

The link to the decision can be found after the jump.

https://www.epo.org/en/boards-of-appeal/decisions/t221350eu1