T 254/86 (OJ 1989, 115) described the objectively closest prior art as the "most promising springboard" towards the invention which was available to the skilled person (see also T 282/90, T 70/95, T 644/97, T 1939/12, T 369/12).

In T 824/05 the board was faced with the situation of two alternative starting points equally suitable for the assessment of inventive step, whereby one starting point, i.e. D11, lead to the conclusion that the claimed subject-matter was obvious and the other starting point, i.e. D1, gave the opposite result. The board held that in this situation D1 did not qualify as the closest state of the art because it did not represent the most promising springboard towards the invention.