T 0824/23 - An intermediate generalisation is allowable ...

Key points

• The Board: "An intermediate generalisation is allowable ..." (this should pique your interest).
• That's not something I've seen very often in the recent case law, so let's pay attention.
• "An intermediate generalisation is allowable if it is directly and unambiguously, explicitly or implicitly, derivable for a skilled person from the application as filed that the feature can be isolated from the other features, such that the omission of the other features does not add new technical information (i.e. the "gold standard", G 2/10, Reasons 4.5.1). In accordance with the established case law of the Boards, the omission is justified only if the isolated feature is not inextricably linked with the other features, or, as sometimes expressed, "in the absence of any clearly recognisable functional or structural relationship" among those features or if it is clearly recognisable that the extracted characteristics are "not closely related" to the omitted characteristics (see Case Law of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, 11th edn., 2025 (Case Law), II.E.1.9.1)."
• "These criteria do not refer to the mere "context" in which the isolated feature was presented. The decisive factor is whether the isolated features taken up in the claim are understood, by the skilled person in the art, to be inextricably linked to the omitted features to which the features taken up were linked but which were left out of the claim. This is the case if the person skilled in the art would have regarded the omitted features to be necessary for achieving the effect associated with the added features (see T 1762/21, Catchword)."
  
  
• After a detailed technical analysis: "Accordingly, the specification  [by the amendment of the claim ]of a direct connection in the vertical direction between the straight vertical inner side surface 52b and the waste receiving surface 44 top end 44a (Feature g') is not inextricably linked with the configuration of the flush water spouting system(s), the structure and geometry of further surfaces involved in the flush water distribution, and the problem of avoiding splashing of flush water out of the bowl."
• The amendment is deemed allowable. 

EPO 

The link to the decision is provided after the jump.

https://www.epo.org/en/boards-of-appeal/decisions/t230824eu1