T 1108/20 - Closed-circuit e-commerce entity

Key points

• The title of the application in this appeal is "METHOD AND STRUCTURE FOR SIMPLIFIED CODING OF DISPLAY PAGES FOR OPERATING A CLOSED CIRCUIT E-COMMERCE"
  
• Claim 1 begins with:  "A method for connecting and operating a closed circuit e-commerce entity comprising at least one shopping terminal, at least one provider and at least one entity center" 
• The Board, however, finds claim 1 to be inventive. The decision may illustrate that non-technical features do not contribute to inventive step under the Comvik approach, but there is, strictly speaking, no penalty for specifying non-technical features under the Comvik approach either if the claim additionally recites non-obvious technical features.
• Claim 1 specifies that "said shopping terminal including a touch screen, a CPU and a second memory is connected with said building server via an interface including a CPU and a first memory"
• The Board: "the board considers that the "CPU" mentioned in distinguishing feature (ii) can only be interpreted as relating to an additional CPU, i.e. in addition to the regular CPU that each server - including the server disclosed in document D2 - possesses. The same applies analogously to the "memory" mentioned in distinguishing feature (iii)."
• "The objective technical problem is how to support a large number of kiosks without overwhelming the server. This problem is solved by distinguishing features (ii) and (iii), since adding a CPU and a memory for processing kiosk requests at the interface reduces the load on the server CPU. However, neither this problem nor its solution are disclosed or hinted at in the prior art at hand."
• "Therefore the board concludes that the subject-matter of claim 1 involves an inventive step."
  
  
• As to the description: "The board notes that the [allowed set of claims] basically corresponds to the claims originally published and that the description as published supports these claims. Hence there is no need to adapt the description to the present claims in order to meet the requirements of Article 84 EPC in the present case." (italics added)
  
  

EPO 

The link to the decision is provided after the jump, as well as (an extract of) the text of the decision.

https://www.epo.org/law-practice/case-law-appeals/recent/t201108eu1.html

3. Inventive step (Article 56 EPC) - claim 1

3.1 In the decision under appeal, the examining division held that distinguishing feature (i) was a non-technical feature which did not solve a technical problem, only the non-technical problem of restricting access to a certain group of people. Since document D2 disclosed login accounts in paragraph [0096], the skilled person would have arrived at this distinguishing feature without employing any inventive skill.

3.2 The appellant submitted that the examining division's interpretation of the term closed circuit was not correct. Furthermore, it was very clear that in accordance with the invention it was necessary to use specific hardware and/or software to be able to use the templated protocols of the invention.

3.3 In view of the appellant's arguments, the board considers that the "CPU" mentioned in distinguishing feature (ii) can only be interpreted as relating to an additional CPU, i.e. in addition to the regular CPU that each server - including the server disclosed in document D2 - possesses. The same applies analogously to the "memory" mentioned in distinguishing feature (iii). In line with the description (lower half of page 55 and upper half of page 56), the board holds that distinguishing features (ii) and (iii) relate to the technical effect of supporting a large number of kiosks without overwhelming the server. The objective technical problem is how to support a large number of kiosks without overwhelming the server. This problem is solved by distinguishing features (ii) and (iii), since adding a CPU and a memory for processing kiosk requests at the interface reduces the load on the server CPU. However, neither this problem nor its solution are disclosed or hinted at in the prior art at hand.

3.4 Therefore the board concludes that the subject-matter of claim 1 involves an inventive step.