In T 61/88 the board indicated that, in the face of an optimal but sophisticated solution to a technical problem, the skilled person could not be denied the capacity to recognise that less complicated alternatives generally achieved less perfect results and consequently to envisage such alternatives, at least in situations in which the advantages of decreased complexity could reasonably be expected to outweigh the resulting loss of performance (T 817/94).

In T 505/96 the board concluded that the simplification of complicated technology in situations in which the advantages of decreased complexity could reasonably be expected to outweigh the resulting loss of performance must be considered to be part of the normal work of the person skilled in the art.