Trilateral Project 24.1-Biotechnology 052

In principle, the application as filed must contain sufficient information to allow a person skilled in the art, using his common general knowledge, to carry out the invention within the whole area that is claimed in order for the requirement of sufficiency of disclosure to be fulfilled. However, in most cases, the invention is considered to be sufficiently disclosed if at least one way is clearly indicated enabling the person skilled in the art to carry out the invention, unless there are serious doubts substantiated by verifiable facts. The disclosure need not include specific instructions as to how all possible component variants within a functional definition can be obtained, as long as the claimed subject matter can be obtained without undue burden by the skilled person taking his general knowledge into consideration. Since the application is addressed to the person skilled in the art it is neither necessary nor desirable that details of well-known ancillary feature should be given, but the description must disclose any feature essential for carrying out the invention in sufficient detail to render it obvious to the skilled person how to put the invention into practice. Also, a specifically described example need not be exactly repeatable, provided that the skilled person can reliably obtain members of the class of compounds claimed.

In order for a claimed priority to be valid, the priority document must also disclose the invention claimed in the subsequent application in such a way that a skilled person can carry it out.

The terminology "how to make" and "how to use" does not apply to EPO practice.