T 0727/17 - Patenting the iPhone 1

Key points

• Can we still put ourselves in the shoes of the pre-iPhone skilled person in the field of mobile phones?
• The iPhone was released 29 June 2007.
• The application at issue in this appeal has a priority date of 2006. The divisional application at issue was filed in 2011.
• "The present application relates to the field of portable communication devices with a display and a touch-screen and, in more detail, to a method of displaying missed telephone calls and of providing the user with options to contact the caller relating to the missed call. The associated graphical user interface (GUI) is illustrated in Figures 12B and 12C of the present application as reproduced below.  FORMULA/TABLE/GRAPHIC FORMULA/TABLE/GRAPHIC"
• "Each entry of the missed phone call list ("interactive displayed item") includes two sections []. Tapping on those sections either initiates a phone call to the caller (i.e. "Bruce Walker" in Fig. 12C) or displays contact information of the caller ("second contact information") allowing the user to initiate a non-telephonic communication to the caller (see e.g. email addresses "2820" and "2822" in Fig. 12C)."
• "Document D1, which was taken as a suitable starting point for the assessment of inventive step in the impugned decision, relates to a portable communication device, which is adapted to provide the user with different functions, e.g. a "telephone mode", a "talk log" or an "electronic note", and to provide for those different functions the respective view on a screen (cf. title and abstract). "
• " the method of [claim 1] therefore differs from the method of D1 solely in that (i) the communication list ("TALK LOG") includes missed telephone calls; (ii) the non-telephonic communication is initiated in response to detecting the user selection of the second contact object and is directed to the corresponding caller."
• "Although it is questionable whether a valid objective technical problem can be formulated in this case (see point 2.4 above) [...] the board, in the appellant's favour, assumes the objective technical problem to be "how to respond to missed calls by non-telephonic communication by fewer clicks and less screens in the system of D1".
• "as to distinguishing feature (ii), it was well within the skills of the skilled person at the present application's priority date to make the contact object for non-telephonic communication in the address book details view interactive to allow the user to initiate the non-telephonic communication by selecting it, in order to reduce the number of necessary clicks and screens. The board notes in this respect that D1 already discloses an "interactive contact object" in the address book details view, namely the "HOME PHONE" entry. As a consequence, in order to solve the
  above-mentioned problem, the skilled person would have readily arrived at a method with all the features of present claim 1 without exercising inventive skills."
  
• "The appellant argued that the priority of the present application dates from the year 2006, i.e. 16 years ago, when smartphones [were] developed. From this point of view, only with hindsight a lack of inventive step could be identified."
• The Board seems to not explicitly reply to this observation. 
• After some further consideration, the appeal is dismissed.

EPO T 0727/17 

The link to the decision is provided after the jump.

https://www.epo.org/law-practice/case-law-appeals/recent/t170727eu1.html