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On November 13, the Intellectual Property High Court (IPHC) upheld the decision of the Board of Appeal that claims 1-4 of the Patent No. 3080347 were invalid.  The patent at issue related to a method for disinfecting PET bottles.  The independent claim 1 includes limitations of the type, concentration and application conditions (temperature and time) of the disinfectant.  The applicant argued that the limitations cooperate with each other to exhibit the critical significance rendering the claim patentable.  Indeed, the specification disclosed experimental results that the disinfecting activity increases continuously with the increases of the temperature and the time.  The court, however, ruled that it is obvious to persons skilled in the art that the disinfecting effect increases with the increases of the concentration, temperature, flow rate, time and this tendency coincides with the continuous increase shown in tables 1-4.  The applicant also argued that there exists a significant difference between inside and outside of the temperature and time range shown in tables 1-4.  The court noted that the minimum limits of the temperature and time simply specified the minimum values resulting a certain disinfecting effect in combination with other conditions and the maximum limits thereof were determined practically in view of the volume of the container, and it was expected that increasing the temperature and time caused an increased disinfecting effect, so that no significant difference would exist between inside and outside the numerical minimum/maximum ranges.
 
See Japanese Patent Examination Guideline Chapter II (Novelty and Inventive step), Part 2 (Inventive Step), 2.5 (Specific Examples of Reasoning), pp 25-26.

http://www.jpo.go.jp/cgi/linke.cgi?url=/tetuzuki_e/t_tokkyo_e/1312-002_e.htm