GL G V 2 Time limit

An essential condition, in both instances G‑V, 1(i) and (ii), is that the disclosure in point must have taken place not earlier than six months preceding the filing of the application.

GL G V 1 General

There are two specific instances (and these are the only two) in which a prior disclosure of the invention is not taken into consideration as part of the state of the art, viz.

GL G V – Non-prejudicial disclosures

1. General

2. Time limit

3. Evident abuse

4. International exhibition

GL G IV 9 Errors in prior-art documents

Errors may exist in prior-art documents.

When a potential error is detected, three situations may arise depending on whether the skilled person, using general knowledge,

(i)can directly and unambiguously derive from the prior art document that it contains an error and what the only possible correction should be;

GL G IV 8 Cross-references between prior-art documents

If a document (the "primary" document) refers explicitly to another document (the "secondary" document) as providing more detailed information on certain features, the teaching of the latter is to be regarded as incorporated into the primary document if the document was available to the public on the publication date of the primary document (see T 153/85) (for the state of the art pursuant to Art. 54(3), see G‑IV, 5.1, and

GL G IV 7.6 Standards and standard preparatory documents

Standards define sets of characteristics or qualities for products, processes, services or materials (e.g. the properties of an interface) and are usually developed by Standards Development Organisations (SDOs) by consensus amongst the relevant economic stakeholders.

Final standards themselves in principle form part of the state of the art under Art. 54(2), although there are important exceptions.

GL G IV 7.5.6 Technical details and general remarks

When printing a web page, care must be taken that the complete URL is clearly legible. The same applies to the relevant publication date on a web page.

It has to be borne in mind that publication dates may be given in different formats, especially in either the European format dd/mm/yyyy, the US format mm/dd/yyyy or the ISO format yyyy/mm/dd.

GL G IV 7.5.5 Problematic cases

Web pages are sometimes divided into frames the content of which is drawn from different sources. Each of these frames may have its own publication date which may have to be checked. In an archiving system, for instance, it may happen that one frame contains the archived information with an old publishing date whereas other frames contain commercials generated at the time of retrieval. The examiner must ensure that the right publication date is used, i.e.

GL G IV 7.5.4 Disclosures which have no date or an unreliable date

Where an internet disclosure is relevant for examination but does not give any explicit indication of the publication date in the text of the disclosure, or if an applicant has shown that a given date is unreliable, the examiner may try to obtain further evidence to establish or confirm the publication date.

GL G IV 7.5.3.3 Non-traditional publications

The internet is also used to exchange and publish information in ways which did not exist before, via, for example, Usenet discussion groups, blogs, email archives of mailing lists or wiki pages.