Functional feature

Functional features are provided in the patent law of several countries in order to protect inventions effectively.

In both European patent law and German patent law, “functional features” are permissible as part of the device claim of a patent if they teach the skilled person how to design the device in question. The use of functional features to define the achieved effect or property of objective features is at least permissible if these functional information are suitable for clarifying the objective features. In the field of telecommunications and data processing, purely functional features are the rule, which lead out of the patent exclusion catalog due to their device category.

Functional features in a device claim did not previously limit the scope of protection in German patent law. According to recent case law, information on the purpose, effect or function as part of a patent claim can participate in its task of delimiting the protected object from the state of the art if they define the device element to which they refer as one that is designed in this way must be that it can fulfill the relevant function.

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1. ↑ BPatG 1 22/01 Ni: railway crane . March 11, 2003 ( bundespatentgericht.de [accessed on May 20, 2010]).
2. ↑ BPatG 21 W (pat) 34/01: Panoramic X-ray device . June 25, 2002.
3. ↑ cf. BGH Xa ZR 69/06: Telecommunications facility . April 15, 2010 ( bundesgerichtshof.de [accessed on May 20, 2010]).
4. ↑ cf. System claim in BGH Xa ZB 20/08: Dynamic document generation . April 22, 2010 ( bundesgerichtshof.de [accessed on May 20, 2010]).
5. ↑ cf. BGH X ZB 15/98: Speech analysis facility . May 11, 2000 ( bundesgerichtshof.de [accessed on May 20, 2010]).
6. ↑ BGH, judgment fastening device II, GRUR 1991, 466.
7. ↑ BGH X ZR 105/04: Air separator for milk collection system . June 7, 2006 ( bundesgerichtshof.de [accessed on May 20, 2010]).