UPC Local Division: Product-by-Process Claims

Product-by-process claims are characterized by the fact that the technical content of the invention does not regularly consist in the process as such, but in the technical properties that are conferred on the product by the process. What is decisive is how the person skilled in the art understands the information on the manufacturing process and what conclusions they draw from this for the inventive nature of the product. The process generally serves solely to define the product. It is not itself the subject of protection and does not restrict it. The process feature typically has the task of further specifying the product, which is not yet distinctively defined by the other spatial-physical features, by the process feature included in the claim leading to a certain additional design of the product, which delimits and distinguishes the product from what is known. However, if the manufacturing process leads to properties in the product that can only be achieved in this way and whose presence can be determined in the finished product, the patent is ultimately limited to products that can be manufactured in this way (LK Düsseldorf 10. 4. 2025, CFI 50/2024).