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.

T 2049/12 - Functional data is not always technical

Key points

• This is an examination appeal concerning a patent application directed to software. 
• The Board: " A common misconception regarding the PHILPS decision [T 1194/97] is that there are only two kinds of data - cognitive and functional - and that functional (i.e. non-cognitive) data is always technical. The relevant question for assessing whether a data structure has technical character is rather whether it produces a technical effect. In the present case, the Board considers that there is no technical effect. Therefore, the claimed data structure does not provide an inventive step (Article 56 EPC)." 
• " Furthermore, the activity of programming is also excluded under Article 52(2)(c) and (3) EPC, because it is a mental act []. The choice of program structure, including the choice of data structures, belongs to the activity of programming. Well structured code helps the programmer in performing this activity, because the code is easier to understand, maintain, and adjust, but, since programming is not technical, this is not a technical effect." 

T 2049/12 (Data structure for defining transformations / MICROSOFT) - link

Reasons for the Decision

5. Inventive step (Article 56 EPC)

5.1 In the oral proceedings, inventive step was discussed starting from the prior art described in the application, from paragraphs [001] to [004]. As mentioned above, it was known to provide multiple services in a sequence, and to transform data provided from one service to another. In the prior art, those transformations (i.e. from "latitude" to "lat" and from "longitude" to "long") were implemented using "specific dedicated code" for each of the transformation. The dedicated code was, of course, stored on some computer-readable medium.

5.2 The prior art and the invention achieve the same transformations. The difference lies in how those transformations are defined. In the prior art, they are defined in "dedicated code", whereas in the invention, they are defined in a data structure having service identification fields, a transformation class field and transformation parameter fields.

T 0697/17 - Technical features, contributions, considerations and decisions

Key points

• This examination appeal relates to a software patent application directed to a method for 'updating values' in a database, in particular, a database with a "complex structured type column". The question is which features are technical for inventive step. Preliminary, the Board overrules the Examining Division's rejection based on Art. 52(2)(a) EPC.
• For patentability: "Claim 1 therefore defines a method performed in a relational database system. In principle, the terms used in a claim should be given the common meaning they have in the relevant technical field. In computer science, the term "relational database system" relates to a software system implemented in one or more computers for storing, controlling and processing data. Carrying out a method performed in a relational database system involves the use of a computer system." In line with G3/08, the computer-implemented method is not excluded.
• On to inventive step and the identification of the technical features. "in practice it may be difficult to distinguish between features making a technical contribution and those not contributing, especially in cases in which the non-technical aspects are tightly intermingled with the technical features" 
•  "From none of the above cited decisions can it be concluded that execution time, processing speed, latency, amount of memory required or other such program performance measurements are per se non-technical measurements which cannot play a role in establishing a technical effect and determining whether a technical contribution is present. The above cited decisions merely teach that an improvement with regard to one of those performance measurements alone ("the sole", "not sufficient", "in itself"), is insufficient to establish technical character. In order to decide whether such an improvement is a technical effect it has to be further determined how the improvement is achieved, for instance whether it is the result of technical considerations" 
• " In other words, features make a technical contribution if they result from technical considerations on how to for instance improve processing speed, reduce the amount of memory required, improve availability or scalability, or reduce network traffic, when compared with the prior art or once added to the other features of the invention, and contribute in combination with technical features to achieve such an effect" (question for the readers with more experience in this field: does the word 'and'  indicates two cumulative or alternative requirements here?)
• " On the other hand, such effects and the respective features are non-technical if the effects are achieved by non-technical modifications to the underlying non-technical method or scheme (for example, a change of the business model, or a "pure algorithmic scheme", i.e. an algorithmic scheme not based on technical considerations)." 
• " A possible test for determining whether non-technical features are based on technical considerations is to consider whether the non-technical features would have been formulated by a technical or by a non-technical expert (T 817/16, reasons 3.12 [see recent post, link to be added]). Since computer programming involves technical and non-technical aspects (G 3/08, reasons 13.5.1; T 1463/11 of 29 November 2016, reasons 21), it is difficult to apply that test to distinguish abstract algorithmic aspects from "technical programming" aspects. In that case, the test would have to be whether the features were determined by a "programmer as such" or by a "technical programmer". It may therefore be preferable to directly determine whether the decision to adopt the non-technical features is a technical one (T 1463/11, reasons 21) or whether it required "technical considerations beyond 'merely' finding a computer algorithm to carry out some procedure" (G 3/08, reasons 13.5)." 

EPO T 0697/17 -  link

VII. Claim 1 of the main request reads as follows:

"A method of updating values in a complex structured type column having a hierarchical structure in a relational database system, wherein the complex structured type consists of a set of fields, properties and methods and wherein each field or property is one of a scalar type, a complex structured type itself or a multiset in which each element is a complex structured type, the method comprising the steps of:
parsing by a parser a database modification statement and producing a description of changes to the database proposed by the database modification statement;
producing by a query optimizer an execution algorithm that will implement the database modification;
computing by a query execution engine that uses the execution algorithm a data structure of the database modification statement to determine which values within a complex structured type column are to be updated, wherein the data structure represents values in the complex structured type column as an aggregation of changes to the values at any level of the hierarchical structure of the complex structured type column; and
applying by the query execution engine the changes to the values in the complex structured type column that are to be updated."

Reasons for the Decision

1. The appeal complies with the provisions referred to in Rule 101 EPC and is therefore admissible.

Invention

2. The invention concerns a relational database system and a corresponding method for updating values in a complex-structured-type column. According to the description, the purpose of the invention is to achieve complex and partial updates efficiently (see paragraph [0001] of the international publication).

T 2575/19 - Debit order in annotations field was valid!

Key points

• "On 19 June 2019 the applicant filed a notice of appeal using EPO form F1038E, which contained a debit order of the full amount of the appeal fee" ... " Whereas the field "Fees" of the form was duly filled with the indication of the amount to be paid, the field "method of payment" was left unspecified and the "annotations" field of the form was used instead to indicate the number of the deposit account." ... " The appeal fee was not debited from said account." (as a comment, the current EPO Online Filing Software makes it very easy to make this mistake, it also allows the filing of such 'invalid' debit order without giving any clear warning).
• The Board: " In the case at hand, the debit order was made using form F1038E, that is to say via an expressly allowed form in a electronically processable format." 
• " In this respect, the board considers that a debit order made using an allowed format cannot be construed as being in a "different" and thus invalid "format such as a PDF attachment", pursuant to point 5.1.3 ADA (2017), even if it was made in an incorrect field of form F1038E." 
• " The board thus concludes that under the ADA (2017), there is no legal basis for holding invalid a debit order given in the annotation tabs of form F1038E, despite the mentioned EPO practice or the fact that it was published"
• However, this applies only until 1 October 2019 because "the board notes that the revised version of the ADA, as amended by decision of the President dated 20 August 2019 (Supplementary publication 4, OJ EPO 2019) and in force since 1 October 2019, seems to confirm this finding, as it now expressly codifies the pertinent EPO practice. New point 5.1.3 now explicitly specifies that "Debit orders submitted in any other way [...] or using a different format such as a PDF attachment or the annotation field in the online forms, are invalid and thus will not be carried out"
• As a comment (added 30.10.2019), this holding, of course, applies equally to all fees paid "in the annotations field" in the first instance proceedings, in particular, further processing fees. If the notice of loss of rights was issued less than 2 months ago, one may still request a decision under Rule 112(2) EPC. If a request for re-establishment has already been filed, the question arises what the effect of the present decision is. 
• One minor quibble, the Board's order  is that "The appeal fee is deemed to have been paid on 19 June 2019." In my view, "The appeal fee was paid on 19 June 2019" would have been more precise because the verb "deem" is used in law " to establish a legal fiction either positively by "deeming" something to be what it is not or negatively by "deeming" something not to be what it is" (wiki)

EPO T 2575/19 - link


Summary of Facts and Submissions

I. By a decision despatched with reasons on 30 April 2019, the Examining Division refused European patent application No. 12 005325.1.

II. On 19 June 2019 the applicant filed a notice of appeal using EPO form F1038E, which contained a debit order of the full amount of the appeal fee from deposit account 28000837.

Whereas the field "Fees" of the form was duly filled with the indication of the amount to be paid, the field "method of payment" was left unspecified and the "annotations" field of the form was used instead to indicate the number of the deposit account.

III. The appeal fee was not debited from said account.

[...]

Reasons for the Decision

1. The only purpose of this interlocutory decision is to determine whether the appeal fee should be deemed to have been paid in time, even though it was not debited by the EPO.

2. Under Article 108 EPC, notice of appeal shall be filed within two months of the notification of the decision. Notice of appeal shall not be deemed to have been filed until the fee for appeal has been paid.

T 2360/13 - Coriolis flow meter software

Key points

• In this somewhat older decision (issued 26.11.2018) the Board finds claim 1 to be inventive. Claim 1 is directed to " a method for providing ordering and configuring of flowmeters, comprising: in a server, receiving ...".
•  " the claimed method comprises two distinct phases, namely a first phase involving the selection and ordering of the flowmeter, and a second phase involving the configuration of the flowmeter after the user has received the selected flowmeter." 
• "the first phase of the claimed method does not go beyond the obvious application of the disclosure of document A1 to a remote ordering client-server system and the subsequent transmission of an order for the selected flowmeter."
• " In the board's view, however, the claimed configuration step goes [of the second phase], in the technical context of the claimed method, beyond a mere communicating with other devices, and in particular with a server, in a network, and requires, as submitted by the appellant, the installation of a configuration application in the flowmeter and therefore the adjustment of the operational characteristics of the flowmeter." 
• " claim 1 has been amended during the appeal proceedings to require that the flowmeter is remotely configured over the network by connecting the remote computer connected to the server to the flowmeter. Neither document D5, nor the remaining documents on file, disclose or suggest remotely configuring a flowmeter, not within the communications network in which the flowmeter might, in operation, be integrated, but by specifically connecting the flowmeter connected to the remote computer to the same server and over the same network previously used for carrying out the operations of selecting and subsequently ordering the flowmeter."

1. A method for providing ordering and configuring of flowmeters, comprising:
in a server (205),
receiving (415) input flow stream parameters over a network (220) from a computer (210) that is remotely located from said server;
determining (420) flowmeter parameters from said input flow stream parameters;
determining (425) whether at least one flowmeter is suitable for said flowmeter parameters;
transmitting (435) information on said at least one flowmeter to said computer over said network for display to a user;
receiving (440) a selection of one of said at least one flowmeter displayed to said user from said computer over said network;
transmitting (475) an order for said selected flowmeter; and
after said user receives said selected flowmeter, remotely configuring said selected flowmeter (477) over said network (220), by connecting the remote computer (210) connected to said server (250) to said selected flowmeter.

EPO T 2360/13 -  link

3.2 Claim 1 is directed to a method allowing a user to select and order a flowmeter and, upon reception of the flowmeter, to configure the flowmeter, using a computer connected to a server over a network and remotely located from the server. Therefore, as held by the examining division in the contested decision in respect of the independent method claim of the requests then on file, the claimed method comprises two distinct phases, namely a first phase involving the selection and ordering of the flowmeter, and a second phase involving the configuration of the flowmeter after the user has received the selected flowmeter.

3.2.1 As regards the first phase, in its decision the examining division essentially held in respect of the independent method claim of the requests then on file that

- the features relating to the selection and ordering of the flowmeter (see the claimed steps of receiving input flow stream parameters, determining the corresponding flowmeter parameters, determining flowmeters suitable for the flowmeter parameters, transmitting to a user information on the suitable flowmeters, receiving a selection by the user of one of the suitable flowmeters, and transmitting an order for the selected flowmeter) pertained to an administrative method, and the ordering phase carried out general purpose administrative data processing;
- having regard to the structural elements of the claimed method (i.e. the server, the network, and the remote computer), the closest state of the art was a notoriously known general purpose computer system such as a client-server system;
- remote order placing mechanisms for different products, such as cars, mobile phones, etc., on the basis of parameters set by a user were already known in the state of the art (see document D1, abstract, together with column 1, line 3 to column 8, line 27; and document D3, abstract), and
- it was obvious for the skilled person to implement the administrative method of remotely allowing the selection and then the ordering of a flowmeter into an appropriate general purpose computer system as claimed (Article 56 EPC 1973).

T 1046/14 - Dragging icons on touch screen

Key point

• In this somewhat older decision (26.11.2018), the Board finds claim 1 to be inventive. The claim is directed to "a method of displaying an icon attributed to an executable function in a terminal having a touchscreen".
• " D1 discloses control means for manipulating an object displayed on a touch screen." 
• "  the appellant has convincingly argued that the objects in D1 are not icons in the sense of claims 1 and 8. " 
• " an icon in D1 [is] a symbolic representation of a computer function which is used for manipulating an object. Furthermore, the entire teaching and the different manipulations described in document D1 solely relate to an object, never to the icon. An object is described as having an "object type", specifying the shape and physical properties of the object (see column 8, lines 21 to 25: "weight", "hardness", "frictional resistance", "center of gravity")." 
• " the objective technical problem may indeed be formulated, as argued by the appellant, as how to improve the system so that an icon of D1 associated with an executable function, not an object, can be moved on the touchscreen while at the same time preventing unintentional displacement of the icon.
• The skilled person will not find in D1 any hint at the possible manipulation of an icon. They would not consider applying the mechanisms for moving objects on the touchscreen to moving the icons, since there are fundamental differences between an icon and an object, such as the above-mentioned types and physical properties (e.g. gravity, friction). " 

• 
  

EPO T 1046/14 -  link

VI. Claim 1 according to the main request reads as follows:

"A method of displaying an icon attributed to an executable function in a terminal having a touchscreen (140), the method including:
- displaying the icon (141) and fixing the icon to a first position on the touchscreen such that the icon can not be moved away from the first position by a touch-and-drag action;
characterized by:
- if the icon is touched for a predetermined time, releasing (S27) the position fixation of the icon such that the whole icon can be moved away from the first position to a second position by a touch-and-drag action; and
- displaying a first indication to visually inform a user that the position fixation of the icon is released, wherein the displayed first indication includes at least one of a graphical indication, an animation, and a text message,
wherein the fixed icon is available to a user before the fixed icon is released."

3. Main request - inventive step

3.1 Prior art D1

D1 discloses control means for manipulating an object displayed on a touch screen.
[...]
 D1 thus discloses a manipulation of an object which is similar, in terms of the movement and display of images on the screen, to the touch-and-drag and fixing actions described in the application.

T 0064/16 - Considerations that are typical for a graphical designer

Key points

• " Claim 1 relates to a computer-implemented method for navigating modelled objects and relations between the objects that are stored in a relational database of a [ "product lifecycle management" ] PLM system."
• " Features (d), (e), (f) and (g) specify how the objects returned by a navigation step are presented to the user. They therefore relate to a presentation of information, which contributes to inventive step only to the extent that it interacts with the technical features of the claim to achieve a technical effect."
• The Board is not convinced. Even if it were accepted that the claimed disk layout distinguishes itself from arbitrary layouts by achieving a particularly compact display of information, this effect would be the result not of technical considerations, but of considerations that are typical for a graphical designer. It would therefore not be a technical effect but rather an effect that is inherent in the presentation of information (see decisions [...] T 817/16 of 10 January 2019,  [ Document scoring/GOOGLE] reasons 3.12 ).
• There was also a discussion about the meaning of the closest prior art. The Board: "Hence, the existence of document D3 cannot invalidate document D1 as a suitable starting point for assessing inventive step." 

EPO T 0064/16 -  link

3. The invention as defined by claim 1

3.1 Claim 1 relates to a computer-implemented method for navigating modelled objects and relations between the objects that are stored in a relational database of a [ "product lifecycle management" ] PLM system. 

The claimed method includes steps that essentially describe two steps of navigation.

3.2 In the first navigation step, the user selects a first object, a first relation and a first layout.

[...]

3.4 The claim specifies that the selected first and second layouts are a "circular layout, with objects represented in exploded perspective distributed on a disk" and that "the disk links objects which belong to a same level in the hierarchy, and the intersection of two disks defines a cue representative of a hierarchy of the displayed object and its displayed descendants in the hierarchy".

4. Inventive step - Article 56 EPC

4.1 Document D1 discloses an information management system comprising a database which contains types of products, attributes associated with these products, and the processes that govern their lifecycles (page 5, lines 1 to 6 and 26 to 32), which thus falls within the scope of the term "product lifecycle management system". Document D1 is therefore a suitable starting point for assessing inventive step.