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IP Court Case Summary:H25 (gyoke) 10036:

October 30, 2013, the Intellectual Property High Court (IP High Court) reversed JPO board of appeal’s decision on the trial against examiner’s final rejection.
 
1. Claimed Invention and Cited Invention
The title of the invention at issue is “Demand Calendar”. 
Claimed invention is “a demand calendar, in which one electricity charge demanding period is settled in one sheet, a fixed section from the first day to the last day of the same period by unit of day is occupied, sections of the respective days of the same week are arranged in the horizontal direction from the left to the right, sections of the respective days of the same day of the week are arranged in the vertical direction in line from the top to the bottom, 
which has: time axes to be arranged by time course going from the left toward the right so as to be scales at the same time of the same day of the week in sections of the respective days when it is viewed in the vertical direction as horizontal axes of sections of the respective days; 
a demand value axes to be arranged so as to be scales of the same demand values in sections of the respective days of the same week when it is viewed in the horizontal direction; and
a demand value instruction which instructs demand values of respective demand time limit according to the scales of the respective axes in sections of the respective days; 
in which the sections of the respective days have instructions which indicate time of sunrise and sunset from the scale of axes of time.”
 
 
[Claimed Inventio
(note) Example of Demand Value
 
Cited invention (Citation-1) is “Energy-Saving Support calendar, in which the indication period which specified the past one month including the processing day is settled in one sheet, a fixed section from the first day to the last day of the same period by unit of day is occupied, sections of the respective days of the same week are arranged in the horizontal direction from the left to the right, sections of the respective days of the same day of the week are arranged in the vertical direction in line from the top to the bottom, 
which has: time axes to be arranged by time course going from the left toward the right so as to be scales at the same time of the same day of the week in sections of the respective days when it is viewed in the vertical direction as horizontal axes of sections of the respective days; 
the energy consumption value axes to be arranged so as to be scales of the same the energy consumption values in sections of the respective days of the same week when it is viewed in the horizontal direction; and
the energy consumption value instruction by bar graph which instructs the energy consumption value of respective demand time limit according to the scales of the respective axes in sections of the respective days”.
 
Appeal Board decided the identical and different points between those inventions as following;
<Identical Points>
a demand calendar, in which — 
a demand value instruction which instructs demand values of respective demand time limits according to the scales of the respective axes in sections of the respective days —
<Different Points>
Claimed invention is “one electricity charge demanding period is settled in one sheet”. However, cited invention is “the indication period which specified the past one month including the processing day is settled in one sheet”. 
Claimed invention is “the sections of the respective days have instructions which indicate time of sunrise and sunset from the scale of axes of time”. However, cited invention does not have the corresponding point.
 
2. Decision by Appeal Board
Claimed invention could be easily invented based on the Citation-1 and Citation-2.
 
3. Decision by IP High Court
The invention claimed in the patent application is one that is intended to solve the problem of prior art, that is, difficulty in understanding the demand value within each demand time limit of each day and concurrently comparing it with the demand values of multiple other days. The description attached to the patent application describes as follows: ‘demand time limit’ means a block of time set by electric power companies, etc., and its possible examples include a 30-minute unit, specifically, ‘0 to 30 minutes and 30 to 60 minutes’; ‘demand value’ refers to the average power used within a demand time limit. It is necessary to draft measures so as to prevent ‘demand value’ from marking a new record high during a prescribed period in the past (for example, for the past 12 months) because ‘demand value’ is used for the calculation of the basic charge for electricity and is used as a standard for contract demand.
On the other hand, Citation-1 neither describes nor suggests that the ‘prescribed time’ is a block of time set by electric power companies, etc. and that the ‘actual value of energy consumption for each prescribed time’ is used for the calculation of the basic charge for electricity and is used as a standard for contract demand. In addition, Citation-1 states that, ‘As one example, energy consumption per hour is measurable in what follows,’ and thereby indicates a unit time that differs from the 30-minute scale demand time limit, which is ordinarily adopted by electric power companies, as an example. Taking this into account, it is reasonable to understand that the cited invention does not present an idea of adopting the demand time limit as the relevant ‘prescribed time.’
In that case, there is an error in the finding in the JPO decision that the cited invention describes and discloses the technical matter, ‘indicating the actual value of energy consumption within each demand time limit,’ in a structure [energy-saving support calendar] having (…), and an indication of the actual value of energy consumption by a bar graph, which indicates the actual value of energy consumption within each demand time limit according to the scale of each axis in the section of each day.
 
<Comments>
The term “demand time limit” in the present invention is described as the section of the time of the unit of 30 minutes in specification. Then, it should be interpreted as a period of 30 minutes. Because it is described as every one hour in the cited invention, it should be decided that “the demand time limit” of claimed invention is not described in Citation-1.
An error in the finding of the cited invention in the Appeal Board’s decision is pointed out in “Case Study of Inventive Step”(the Japan Patent Office). Therefore, an error in the finding of the cited invention by the Japan Patent Office should be sufficiently checked by applicants from now.
 
http://www.ip.courts.go.jp/hanrei/pdf/20131106094339.pdf