B 2026 - our provisional answer
This year Nyske and I tried Paper B. First
impression is that this was a doable paper. There seems to be only one
direction to go for a solution. As always there was some minor disagreement
about the exact formulation of the claims, or what claims to include, but on
the whole we were pretty much in agreement.
Below is our amended
claim set. Below the claims are comments on some alternative directions.
1. Drip tray (1) for
collecting liquid underneath a kitchen appliance, the drip tray (1) comprising
a rectangular base (2) delimited by sidewalls (3), a rear wall (4), and a front
wall (5), said walls forming a continuous wall around the base (2), characterised
by the front wall (5) being lower than the sidewalls (3) and the rear wall
(4), characterised in that the front wall (5) comprises a recess (6) forming
an outlet,
wherein the recess (6) reaches down to a height (C)
that is smaller than the height (A) of the front wall.
2. Drip tray (1)
according to claim 1, wherein the front wall (5) has a height (A) of 10- 20 mm.
3. Drip tray (1)
according to claim 2, wherein the front wall (5) comprises a recess (6)
forming an outlet, and wherein the recess (6) is V-shaped or U-shaped.
4. Drip tray (1)
according to claim 1, wherein the drip tray (1) comprises a polyolefin and
also comprises triclosan.
5. Drip tray (1)
according to claim 1, wherein the drip tray (1) comprises polypropylene and also comprises triclosan.
5. Drip tray (1)
according to claim 1, wherein the drip tray (1) is connected to a skirting
board (10) by a snap connection formed by floor supports (11) of the skirting
board (10) fitting into receivers (7) extending from the base (2).
6. Combination of
skirting board (10) and drip tray (1) according to any one of the claims 1-5,
wherein the drip tray (1) comprises a rectangular base (2) delimited by
sidewalls (3), a rear wall (4), and a front wall (5), said walls forming a
continuous wall around the base (2), and wherein the skirting board (10)
comprises floor supports (11) for elevating the skirting board (10) from the
floor, characterised by the floor supports (11) having a height (D) that
is larger than the height (A) of the front wall (5) of the drip tray (1).
7. Combination of
skirting board (10) and drip tray (1) according to claim 65. Drip tray (1) according to claim 1, wherein the drip tray (1) is connected to a
skirting board (10) by a snap connection formed by floor supports (11) of the
skirting board (10) fitting into receivers (7) extending from the base (2)
of the drip tray.
78.
Combination of skirting board (10) and drip tray (1) according to claim 6,
wherein the drip tray (1) comprises an adhesive strip (8) for mounting the drip
tray (1) on a floor
Comments
Claim 1. The
recess seems to be the way to go. It’s novel and it provides a clear advantage
(well, talking about advantages, it ensures you will get a puddle on the
floor in case of a leakage. One man’s bug is another man’s feature, I suppose.)
New claim 1 is based on the combination of
original claims 1 and 3. It is allowed to remove the shape of the recess,
because of para 18. The height
limitation comes from para 12.
For maximal novelty insurance against D1,
one might add the feature from para 13 “wherein water overflowing via the
recess (6) will be directed onto the floor for detection while smaller volumes
caused by condensation will remain in the drip tray (1)”. If you go that
way, you’ll also need to amend liquid to water in line 1 of Claim 1.
Claim 3. We
removed the part that went into claim 1. In addition we completed the claim by
including the other shape option mentioned in the description.
Claim 4. The
claim suggested by the Client is not possible since polyethylene is not
disclosed in the application as filed. We can still protect the use of
triclosan in two ways, either the generic polyolefin with triclosan, or the
specific material polypropylene with triclosan. The former gives protection for
polyethylene, the latter gives protection for a combination that was among ‘the
best of the polymers we tested’.
Adding a dependent claim violates the Client
instruction not to add further dependent claims. However, this construction
seems to be the only way to fulfill the Client wish to protect the combination
of polyethylene and triclosan as well. Truth be told, our claim 5 does not seem
a strong fallback since D3 already discloses the combination of polypropylene
and anti-mould additives; triclosan being a known one.
Yet, another option is to keep original
claim 4 (without triclosan). However, polyolefin is known for drip trays (D3,
para 7), so this not a strong fallback.
Claim 6. The
non-unity problem in original claim 6 can be resolved by including the recess,
which is the innovative feature. The clean way to do so is to refer back to
Claim 1. It seems there is support for referring back to all drip tray claim,
and so we have done so. The features
already in Claim 1 can be deleted.
Claim 7. Original
claim 5 was not clear because it is not clear whether or not the
skirting board is claimed. There are two ways to resolve this: amending the claim
to clearly include or exclude the
skirting board. In the amended claim set above, we chose the first option.
Here we run into a bit of a contradiction
in the Client’s letter. On the one hand, the client does not want us to add further
dependent claims, but the client also tells us “please ensure that we achieve
protection for all claims mentioning the skirting board as well as for the drip
tray on its own”. We could claim the
drip tray on its own by including a claim like:
Drip tray (1)
according to claim 1, wherein the drip tray (1) comprises receivers (7) extending
from the base (2) for connecting to a skirting board (10) by a snap connection
formed by floor supports (11) of the skirting board (10) fitting into the
receivers (7).
Claim 8. We did not amend claim 8, although there is
support to claim the adhesive strip without the skirting. While for claim 7 one
could argue that having a specific claim for the drip tray would not add much
protection, since the drip tray with extension would be used with a skirting
board anway. It would actually make sense to broaden claim 8 to optimize
protection. However, as there was no hint in the client letter to address this,
we did not do this.
Novelty/Inventive
step
Arguing the novelty
and inventive step is fairly straightforward. It seems that D3 is the closest
prior art, since it is the only document in the field of drip trays that also
has the purpose of providing alarms in case of leakage.
A tricky aspect when
discussing novelty and inventive step is that all documents disclose some kind
of recess. In document D1 the wheels may damage the
front wall of the drip tray. This will cause a recess in the front wall.
Fortunately, the claim is novel since D1 also specifies that condensation can
escape from the drip tray, which means that the recess apparently reaches all
the way to the ground. Document D2 has openings in the side wall. However,
these are at the wrong place, and they teach away because they are sealable.
Finally D3 teaches cut outs. Here the cut out is made in the skirting not in
the drip tray itself.
