T 1225/19 - Proximity-based reminders

Key points

• The invention is essentially the idea of setting a reminder that is triggered if another person is nearby.
• "The entire scheme can be summarized by the following, purely administrative instructions: "please, remind the user of an action (item), when a contact which is involved in the action (item) is or will be close to the user, in order to realise the action (item)"".
• The Board considers the claims to lack an inventive step based on a straightforward application of the Comvik approach.
• "in addition to the non-technical features, the subject-matter of claim 1 includes technical features, in particular a "processor ... on an electronic device". Thus, the subject-matter of claim 1 relates to an invention within the meaning of Article 52(1) EPC."
• "The features defined in claim 1 represent a mixture of technical and non-technical features. An invention consisting of a mixture of technical and non-technical features and having technical character as a whole is to be assessed with respect to inventive step by taking account of all those features which contribute to the technical character whereas features making no such technical contribution cannot support the presence of inventive step (see T 641/00"
• "All [the technical] features as such are individually known and are also known as being, if necessary, integrated in a notorious computer system. This represents the technically skilled person's notorious knowledge."
• " When starting from a notorious computer system, like a PDA [personal digital assistant] , the business person provides the following purely administrative/business scheme as business constraints to the technically skilled person for implementation on the notorious computer system ... the following, purely administrative instructions: "please, remind the user of an action (item), when a contact which is involved in the action (item) is or will be close to the user, in order to realise the action (item)", whereby the board considers "action" and "action item" being equivalents."
• "Having this business scheme in hand, the skilled person, a software programmer, has to solve the objective technical problem of providing the computer implementation and automation of the above formulated business method in the notorious electronic device. The provided technical solution neither calls for a particular technical implementation nor provides a further technical effect beyond the straightforward computer implementation. In particular, the implementation of this business constraint ("please, remind the user, ... the action item") relating to the determination of the proximity of a contact and the user, is held by the board, contrary to the appellant's view, not inventive. "
• "features a) and b) derive immediately from the straightforward implementation of the non-technical business requirement mentioned above. All other features relating to the remaining steps of the computer implementation of the business scheme are also straightforward implementations since the technical means required for all these various procedural steps are well-known standard features and the definition according to claim 1 is technically unspecified. This is not disputed by the appellant. 
• Since the result of the straightforward implementation of the above cited business scheme is the method defined in claim 1, the board concludes that the subject-matter of claim 1 of the main request does not involve an inventive step "

EPO 

The link to the decision is provided after the jump. 

https://www.epo.org/law-practice/case-law-appeals/recent/t191225eu1.html