To Have Your Cake and Eat It Too: Sufficient Disclosure of Inventions in the Light of the Polish Supreme Administrative Court’s Judgment of 24 April 2022, II GSK 1724/18

Abstract

The subject matter of this opinion is the Polish Supreme Administrative Court’s judgment on the invalidity of a patent concerning a calcium-magnesium fertiliser due to its insufficient disclosure. This paper presents the course of the invalidation proceedings before the Polish Patent Office and administrative courts against the background of the Polish Industrial Property Law and the Polish Patent Office’s Guidelines concerning sufficient disclosure of inventions. It also briefly refers to the EPC and EPO practice on the standards of sufficient disclosure, including the recent EPO decision G2/21. Finally, it offers approving comments on the judgment itself, notices the practical impossibility of remedying the failure to disclose enough and mentions current systemic challenges to the requirement of sufficient disclosure as a fundamental rule of patent systems.