T 1902/13 - The business consultant

Key points

• In this examination appeal about a computer-implemented business method, the ‘business consultant’ figures.
• “According to the invention, parts of the process are therefore automated using a computer system. However, the computer system would still follow the same principles as the business consultant following the underlying administrative concept according to the set of rules and questions. [...] [T]he underlying administrative concept following the traditional business consultant approach would be provided to the programmer as a requirements specification.
• This present decision appears to essentially follow the CardinalCommerce approach which introduced the ‘notional business person’ (T1463/11).

EPO T 1902/13 -  link



1. Background of the invention

The present invention is directed to a computer-based method for assessing competence levels of an organisation comprising multiple organisational units as conventionally assessed by business consultants.

 
3.3 Designing questions for determining competence levels [of employees] and method steps and decisions leading thereto as well as mathematical/statistical operations of weighting, scaling and norming are all in the non-technical domain of an economist or a business person (Article 52(2)(a) and (c) EPC) and do not make an inventive technical contribution. The parameters resulting from those questions are considered to be non-technical, i.e. cognitive data.

A business consultant, who wants to assess the competence of an organisation would design a set of rules and questions, which can be reused for another organisation. In order to present meaningful results, e.g. on a flip-chart using graphical diagrams like well known spider diagrams, the business consultant would have to transform the answers into numerical values, scale and weight them. No computer would be needed for performing these tasks. The more dimensions the quantities require, the more cumbersome and time consuming these tasks would be. According to the invention, parts of the process are therefore automated using a computer system. However, the computer system would still follow the same principles as the business consultant following the underlying administrative concept according to the set of rules and questions. The Board does not agree with the appellant's argument put forward during oral proceedings, that the business person and the skilled programmer would have to sit together in order to elaborate a workable solution. Rather the underlying administrative concept following the traditional business consultant approach would be provided to the programmer as a requirements specification.

3.4 The Board does not see how the claimed invention can automatically initiate decisions ("automatische Initiierung von Verfahrensentscheidungen") as argued by the appellant (see page 5, last paragraph of the grounds). Every decision concerning what to do in order to improve competence has to be taken by a human interpreting the diagrams or the data in general. There is no automation in this regard and this goes beyond what is covered by the independent claims.