As to obviousness and the references the person skilled in the art would refer to, respectively combine, the Federal Supreme Court ruled:
If there traditionally was a conceptual gap between two sectors of a technical field (here: data transmission in public telephone networks versus data transmission by means of internet/LAN technology), then nonetheless the person skilled in the art may have reason to refer to suggestions of both sectors in order to solve a technical problem if already on the priority date applications and methods evolved which pass the gap between both the sectors (here: internet telephoning) and if the technical problem has to be faced in both sectors in a similar manner.
Read the decision (in German) here.
Read a summary in English, provided by Bardehle & Pagenberg, here.
Head note: Tilman Müller-Stoy
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