EPO case law week 23

Noteworthy EPO decisions week 23 (published 01.06-05.06.2015)

T0306/10 - feature technical or not? - In the Board's view, the selection of an item, for example a song, for recommendation to a user does not qualify as a technical purpose. From a technical point of view it is irrelevant what songs are recommended to a user. While making "good" or "bad" recommendations may lead to different user reactions and thereby, in the end, to different technical results (the user might for example play more or fewer songs, or issue more or fewer search queries in order to find other songs), such results do not qualify as a technical effect of the recommendations, as they depend on subjective choices made by the user (cf. decision T 1741/08 of 2 August 2012, reasons 2.1.6).

T 0445/08 - [C] - Correction identity of appellant, follow up of G1/12 - EPO headnote: If the notice of appeal is to be considered in the context of the file history, the true intention needs to be confirmed by external facts and evidence at least to prevent that requirements such as those of Article 107 EPC be circumvented. In applying Rule 139 EPC to a party's request to correct a mistake in the notice of appeal in respect of the identity of the appellant, the principle of legal certainly needs to be taken into consideration . 

T 0756/09 - Australian patent attorney allowed to speak as accompanying person - precisely because he would not speak as technical expert.

T 0275/11 - The alleged technical effect of  a hair treatment was based on comparison by testers. Insufficient evidence, because " No indication was given on the conditions under which these tests were run. Further, in its statement of grounds of appeal the Appellant only gave a summary of the test results, which can assist the Board in its evaluation of the experimental evidence, but which cannot substitute for the detailed information on the individual test results presented either in terms of written statements of each testing person or in terms of tables containing the individual scores given by these testers. Therefore, the Respondent and the Board did not have the information to objectively assess and evaluate the experimental evidence referred to by the Appellant."