T 1082/13 - Tax calculation via a network

Key points

• This examination appeal deals with a "computer-implemented method for applying tax legislation to a transaction". The method steps have nothing to do with tax legislation but are directed to sending a calculation request to an available server. Unavailable servers are skipped based on a 'timeout'. 
• The Board: " the notional business person cannot be assumed to be so blind that he does not even know about the existence of computers or the Internet. The notional business person, as introduced in T 1463/11 [CardinalCommerce], is to be interpreted within the framework of the well established COMVIK-approach of T 641/00 (see T 1463/11, [] "... in line with the Comvik principle..."). Consequently, the notional business person knows all about the business-related requirements specification and knows about the fact that such business-related concepts can be implemented on a computer system (stand-alone or networked, including the Internet). What the notional business person does not know, however, is how exactly it can be implemented on a computer system. This is in the sphere of the technical expert and subject to the assessment of inventive step." (hyphens added)

EPO Headnote

1. The assessment of technical character of a claim does not require a reference to the prior art following the established "whole contents approach" (see reasons, point 1.1).

2. A "timeout" condition claimed in general and broad terms that cover non-technical interpretations is in the domain of the non-technical person and part of the requirements specification given to the technical expert for implementation on a computer system (see reasons, point 2.4).

3. The "notional business person", as introduced in T1463/11 [CardinalCommerce], is to be interpreted within the framework of the well established COMVIK-approach according to T0641/00. Consequently, the notional business person knows all about the business related requirements specification and knows about the fact that such business related concepts can be implemented on a computer system. The choice of where to do a calculation in a distributed system is not necessarily technical, but can also be driven by administrative considerations. What the notional business person does not know, however, is how exactly it can be implemented on a computer system. This is in the sphere of the technical expert and subject to the assessment of inventive step.

4. When referring to prejudices, it has to be carefully analysed, whether it is actually a technical prejudice or, in fact, a business prejudice (e.g. just a new way of organising a business transaction that goes against traditional ways of organising it - see reasons, point 4.8).

T 1082/13 -   link

"3. A computer implemented method for applying tax legislation to a transaction comprising:

- receiving a request (118; 318) for performing a tax calculation via a network, the request carrying a first mark-up language document (108) containing transaction data,
- performing the tax calculation,
- generating a response (144; 344'), the response carrying the first mark-up language document and a result of the tax calculation,
- forwarding the request to a replacement system (304', 336') via the network, if the means for performing the tax calculation and/or the means for generating the response are unavailable,
wherein the replacement system is determined by:
- submitting a predefined UDDI query to a UDDI registry (700) via the network;
- receiving a response to the UDDI query, the response comprising an indication of a plurality of potential replacement web services (702);
- calculating a ranking value for each web service of the plurality of potential replacement web services (704);
- sorting the plurality of potential replacement web services (706) by ranking value to provide a sorted table (660);
- storing the sorted table (708);
- determining the replacement system as the highest ranking web service in the sorted table (710),
- determining whether a response to the forwarding of the request to the replacement system is received before a timeout condition is met, wherein in case of meeting the timeout condition the highest ranking web service is deleted from the sorted table and said steps of
- determining the replacement system as the highest ranking webservice in the sorted table (710) and
- determining whether a response to the forwarding of the request to the replacement system is received before a timeout condition is met are repeatedly carried out."

Reasons for the Decision

4.7 During oral proceedings the appellant referred to decision T 1463/11 (CardinalCommerce) and argued that the present invention was comparable to the centralisation of individual authentication initiative plug-ins in a separate server that can be accessed by several merchant servers, which was held to be technical and non-obvious (see reasons, point 21). However, in T 1463/11 the alleged non-technical idea (centralising authentication services) only arose in connection with technical aspects (avoiding maintenance of software plug-ins in merchant computers). In the present case, as explained above, the idea of the timeout functionality comes from the business requirements that do not involve any technical knowledge.

4.8 The appellant also argued that a distributed computer system is a complete black-box for the non-technical person so that he would not be able to conceive of any aspects of the invention that would subsequently have to be implemented in the computer, such as a timeout. However, what has been referred to above as the quasi-technical term "timeout" really originates from the business person as the requirement of not waiting too long for a response. The technically skilled person translates this requirement into a "timeout" involving a timer element as a matter of routine design as mentioned above.

Moreover, the notional business person cannot be assumed to be so blind that he does not even know about the existence of computers or the Internet. The notional business person, as introduced in T 1463/11, is to be interpreted within the framework of the well established COMVIK-approach of T 641/00 (see T 1463/11, reasons of the decision, point 16 "... in line with the Comvik principle..."). Consequently, the notional business person knows all about the business related requirements specification and knows about the fact that such business related concepts can be implemented on a computer system (stand-alone or networked, including the Internet). What the notional business person does not know, however, is how exactly it can be implemented on a computer system. This is in the sphere of the technical expert and subject to the assessment of inventive step.

The choice of where to do a calculation in a distributed system is not necessarily technical, but can also be driven by administrative considerations (e.g. where the data is needed, collected or to be presented etc. following the business requirements specification). When referring to prejudices, it has to be carefully analysed, whether it is actually a technical prejudice or, in fact, a business prejudice (e.g. just a new way of organising a business transaction that goes against traditional ways of organising it etc.). In the present case and in view of the subject-matter according to claim 3, the Board does not see any such technical prejudice, which might have had to be overcome in a non-obvious way similar to what was decided in decision T 1463/11.

4.9 The appellant's arguments provided with the statement setting out the grounds of appeal, with letter dated 22 November 2018 and during oral proceedings do not convince for the aforementioned reasons.

4.10 Accordingly, the Board judges that in the absence of any technical contribution beyond the straight-forward computer-implementation, the subject-matter of claim 3 does not involve an inventive step (Article 56 EPC) over the teaching of D3 combined with the skilled person's common general knowledge.