T 1193/23: Antwoorden van chatbots zijn op zichzelf onvoldoende om het begrip van een gemiddelde vakman met betrekking tot de betekenis van octrooiconclusies vast te stellen

 In beslissing T 1193/23 heeft de Kamer van Beroep van het Europees Octrooibureau een octrooi herroepen dat betrekking had op een methode voor het veilig starten en/of stoppen van een roterende rotor van een rotorspinmachine (elektromotor). De beslissing behandelt met name de relevantie van antwoorden van chatbots (in het bijzonder ChatGPT) bij de interpretatie van octrooiconclusies. De Kamer concludeerde dat dergelijke antwoorden niet automatisch mogen worden beschouwd als een weergave van het begrip van de gemiddelde vakman.

Lees de case hieronder verder in het Engels.

Background

The Opposition Division had maintained the patent in amended form. The case concerned a method for safely starting and/or stopping a rotor of a rotor spinning machine. Key features involved checking the position control for active magnetic bearings and/or the data connection to the motor control, and blocking the start or stopping the rotor if predetermined setpoints or states were not reached.

During appeal a dispute arose regarding the interpretation of several claim terms, particularly "position control" and "checking" versus "monitoring." The patent proprietor had cited ChatGPT answers to support their interpretation of these terms.

The Board's reasoning

The Board first addressed the use of ChatGPT answers in claim interpretation. The Board noted that "the mere increasing prevalence and use of chatbots based on language models ('large language models') and/or 'artificial intelligence' does not yet justify the assumption that a received answer - which may be based on training data unknown to the user and also depend sensitively on the context and exact wording of the question(s) - necessarily correctly represents the understanding of the skilled person in the respective technical field (at the relevant time.

The Board explained that evidence of how certain terms in a patent claim are interpreted by the skilled person may be demonstrated through appropriate technical literature, but no such evidence was submitted in this case.

Regarding the disputed claim terms, the Board rejected the patent proprietor's narrow interpretation. The Board found that the term "checking" in the claim does not exclude "monitoring," contrary to the patent proprietor's arguments. The Board also concluded that "position control" could refer to both a device and a process, not just the device as argued by the proprietor.

The Board ultimately revoked the patent for lack of novelty over prior art document D3, which was found to disclose all claimed features either explicitly or implicitly.

Decision of the Board

The Board found all requests unallowable and revoked the patent.

Summary written by the NLO EPO Case Law Team