“Air Cap System” (Luftkappensystem)Decision of the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) 13 October 2015 – Case No. X ZR 74/14

If, in a patent specification, two measures that differ only in degree (here: blocking and restriction of an air flow) are named without detailed differentiation as the starting point for a problem arising in the state of the art, then it cannot without further justification be concluded from the fact that only the measure with the stronger effect (here: blocking) is mentioned in the patent claim that the measure with weaker effect is not sufficient to embody the protected teaching.