1、Reference is
made to the following document; the numbering will be adhered to in the rest of
the procedure.
D1 JP 2003 137494 A (MITSUI SHIPBUILDING ENG) 14May 2003 (2003-05-14)
2、Although
claim 1 meets the requirements of Article 52(1) EPC with respect to the
available prior art, amendment is required to overcome the objection below.
3、To meet the
requirements of Rule 42(1)(b)EPC,D1 should be identified in the description and
its relevant contents should be indicated. The applicant should ensure that it
is clear from the description which features of the subject-matter of
independent claim 1 are known from D1.
4、The features
of the claims should be provided with reference signs placed in parentheses to
increase the intelligibility of the claims (Rule 43(7)EPC). This applies to both the preamble and characterizing
portion (see Guidelines F-IV,4.19).
5、The vague
and imprecise statement in the description on page 5, which refers to the “spirit” of the invention
implies that the subject-matter for which protection is sought may be different
to that defined by the claims, thereby
resulting in a lack of clarity of the claims (Article 84 EPC) when the
description is used to interpret the claims (see Guidelines F-IV, 4.4) . Thisstatement should therefore be amended to remove this inconsistency.