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Document region protection: technical but obvious

This decision concerns a European patent application relating to protecting regions within an electronic document. The Examining Division (ED) refused the application for lack of inventive step. The applicant appealed the decision but was not successfully. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision of T 1145/10 dated February 26, 2016, of Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) 3.5.07.

Key takeaways

Whether the control of access is by password or on the basis of the identity of the user is a consequence of a non-technical requirement with regard to the type of document protection desired by the document owner.

Whether the status information in the form of a message is to be distinguished from visual indication is not relevant; such a difference constitutes a minor detail and relates in any case to the non-technical question of how to present the information.

The invention

The invention is directed to a method for protecting regions within an electronic document in a word-processing application. The word-processing application provides an administrative mode and an enforcement mode. In the administrative mode, a protection scheme may be defined for the entire document, for instance making the entire document read-only. Additionally, the user may select a region within the electronic document and identify users authorised to freely edit the region. In the enforcement mode, when a request to edit a region of the electronic document is received, the word-processing program of the invention determines whether the user making the request is authorised to edit the region. If the user is not authorised, the request is denied.

Fig. 10 of EP1513075

Here is how the invention was defined by independent claim 1:

Claim 1 (main request)

A method for protecting regions within an electronic document, the method comprising:

executing a word processing application program (30) on a computer, the word processing application program operative to provide an administrative mode (1506; 1602; 1720) and an enforcement mode (1510; 1608; 1702), wherein

in the administrative mode the word processing application program is operative

to receive the selection of a region (62; 90; 92) within the electronic document and the identities of one or more users (68A; 68B) authorized to freely edit the selected region,

and to receive the selection of a protection scheme to be applied to the entire electronic document, wherein said protection scheme comprises one of rendering the entire electronic document read-only; allowing only comments to be inserted into the electronic document; allowing users to only freely edit form fields contained in the electronic document; and allowing tracked edits to be freely made to the entire document;

and wherein, in the enforcement mode, the word processing application program is operative

to apply the selected protection scheme to the document,

to receive requests to edit regions of the electronic document and to deny (1708) requests to edit regions of the electronic document made by users not authorized to freely edit the regions,

and to dynamically displaying a message (104) to the user depending on the location of the insertion point (110), wherein, if the insertion point is located within a region that may be freely edited by the user, the message indicates that the user may freely edit within the region, whereas, if the insertion point is within a region of the electronic document that the user is not authorized to freely edit, the message indicates that the user is not permitted to edit in the region.

Is it patentable?

The TBA agreed with the ED that the claims define a mix of technical and non-technical features. In particular, the invention of claim 1 implements an administrative method comprising

(a) defining the protection scheme for an entire document, where the protection is one of: read-only, only insertion of comments, editing only of form fields, or allowing tracked changes,
(b) defining regions within a document and identifying for each region one or more users authorised to freely edit the region,
(c) enforcing the protection scheme and authorisation settings of (a) and (b).

The following technical features are included in claim 1:

(d) dynamically displaying a message to the user depending on the location of the insertion point, wherein, if the insertion point is located within a region that may be freely edited by the user, the message indicates that the user may freely edit within the region, whereas, if the insertion point is within a region of the electronic document that the user is not authorised to freely edit, the message indicates that the user is not permitted to edit in the region.

The TBA accessed the inventive step of claim 1 in detail as follows:

Closest prior art – D2

6. Document D2 discloses a GUI-based word-processing application extended with some collaboration functionality for the editing or reviewing of a document by multiple users. It supports the insertion of comments to a document, and tracking of changes by multiple identified users (see title, pages 129 to 131, 135). Document D2 is hence an adequate starting point for discussing inventive step.

7. The system of document D2 supports both read-only and password-based protection of documents (page 129, second paragraph). It also allows the creation of forms and “protecting the form so that users can interact only with the fields, not change the form itself”, optionally in combination with password protection (page 216, third paragraph).

From the above, it follows that the system of document D2 supports protection schemes similar to those mentioned in the claim, namely rendering the document read-only, allowing comments to be inserted, allowing only editing of form fields, or allowing tracked edits. Only one of the protection schemes mentioned in the claim (see (a) above), i.e. allowing only comments to be inserted, is not disclosed in document D2.

In the opinion of the Board, the support for access control to parts of the document (e.g. a form field) means that the system of D2 also authorises or denies user operations on a document or on a region of a document in accordance with the protection scheme and authorisation settings for the document, similarly to feature (c) (see point 3 above). It also means that the method of document D2 includes a step of receiving the selection of a region with access permission within the electronic document.

Two modes of operation, corresponding to the administrative and enforcement modes specified in the claim, are also implicit in the system of document D2, which allows the definition and enforcement of access permissions.

Distinguishing features of claim 1

8. The subject-matter of claim 1 of the main request therefore differs from the method for protecting regions within a document by the system of document D2 in that

(a’) the selected and applied protection scheme may also be that of allowing only comments to be inserted according to (a) above,

(b’) for a selected region the identities of the users authorised to freely edit the region (see step (b) above) are received and, in the enforcement mode, requests to edit regions made by non-authorised users are denied,

and in that a dynamically displayed message indicates whether the user may freely edit the current region, as recited in (d) above.

9. Steps (a) and (b) relate to non-technical administrative constraints reflecting the types of policies required by an authority, or an owner or administrator of a document, with respect to certain operations to be allowed or denied for particular users of the document, for instance co-authors, collaborators or clients. Establishing such policy types does not involve any technical considerations.

Technical problem

The problem underlying the subject-matter of the distinguishing features (a’) and (b’) is therefore the implementation of the non-technical administrative steps (a) and (b) on a method performed by the system of document D2.

Solution not inventive

Steps (a’) and (b’) follow directly from the administrative scheme. As explained above, feature (a’) is actually a minor modification of features of document D2. Taking into account that the system of D2 knows the user name, and supports user-based functions (see e.g. first paragraph of page 135) and control of access to parts of the document (page 216), it would be obvious for the skilled person to add the distinguishing features (a’) and (b’) to a method performed by the word-processing system of D2, in order to arrive at a method carrying out administrative steps (a) and (b).

In its reply to the Board’s communication, the appellant argued that, even if defining regions within a document and identifying authorised users for a region were merely an administrative activity, enforcing the protection schemes of the invention in the system of document D2 would be done by protecting regions by passwords. The Board, however, finds that whether the control of access is by password or on the basis of the identity of the user is a consequence of a non-technical requirement with regard to the type of document protection desired by the document owner. Since the system of document D2 supports both user-based functions and password-based access control, it would be obvious to support control of access based on the user names to meet user requirements. Furthermore, the claim does not specify further technical implementation details of the control of access based on the user’s identity.

10. In the grounds of appeal the former appellant argued that features (d) rendered the subject-matter of claim 1 inventive over the cited prior art. By displaying the message indicating whether the user was permitted to freely edit the region in which the insertion point was currently located in the enforcement mode, the system let the user instantly recognise his status with regard to the protection applied to the respective region. As a consequence, the user did not waste time and effort by trying in vain to edit a region, possibly assuming that the computer was malfunctioning when his changes were not reflected by the electronic document as seen on screen. None of the cited prior-art documents suggested a related feature. As in T 643/00 of 16 October 2003, these features had the technical effect of improving efficiency of the user’s task when working with possibly complex and extensive data.

The subject-matter discussed in T 643/00, which related to a user interface for searching and retrieving images, is very different from that of the present application, as pointed out by the Examining Division. The two cases can be considered to have in common the improvement of user interaction. Feature (d) can be seen as solving the problem of improving user interaction during editing of a document with protected regions.

11. Improving user interaction by means of status information was standard practice before the date of priority of the present application. As the Board explained at the oral proceedings, it was common in well-known word-processors to show editing, styling or formatting modes for the current region of the document. The Board cited the example of the Microsoft word-processor of document D2, which displayed such status information in the horizontal ruler on top of the edited document and in the toolbars shown in the figures of pages 131, 137 and 139. The horizontal ruler showed the indentation of the current paragraph or line, whereas the toolbars displayed the text alignment of the current paragraph (e.g. left, right, centred or justified), or settings relating to font, character formatting (e.g. bold, italic), text style, or other options.

In its letter of reply to the Board’s communication, the appellant argued that it was difficult to imagine how, with the password-based protection scheme of document D2, it would be straightforward to dynamically display a message indicating whether or not the user could freely edit the region, since the document did not know whether or not the user knew the password and was allowed to edit the region or not. The Board does not find this argument persuasive, because the system of document D2 is at any time aware of whether the user has already entered the password or not, and whether the current region (for example, an input field in a form) is read-only or editable.

Taking the above into account, the Board is of the opinion that it would be an obvious option for the skilled person to improve the user interface of a system with protected regions by adding further status information similar to that known from the prior art. In the context of editing documents with protected regions, it would be an immediate option to add, to a word-processing system with the functionality of document D2, status information regarding whether the user is allowed to edit the current region. Whether the status information in the form of a message, as specified in the claim, is to be distinguished from the type of visual indication mentioned above is not relevant; such a difference constitutes a minor detail and relates in any case to the non-technical question of how to present the information.

In the Board’s opinion, the problem solved by feature (d), related to editing the document in the enforcement mode, is independent of that solved by features (a’) and (b’) above, directed to the protection and authorisation scheme. No synergistic effect is recognised from combining feature (d) with features (a’) and (b’).

Outcome

The TBA considered that the subject-matter of claim 1 of the main request not inventive. None of the auxiliary requests was helpful. Hence, the patent application was finally refused.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: decision of T 1145/10 dated February 26, 2016, of Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) 3.5.07.

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Maggie Huang

Maggie is a German and European patent attorney at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG. Her technical background is Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

www.bardehle.com/team/detail/huang-maggie.html

Generating, accessing, and displaying lineage metadata: technical

This decision concerns a European patent application relating to data structures and methods for generating, accessing, and displaying lineage metadata, e.g. lineage of an element of data stored in a data storage system. The Examining Division (ED) refused the application for lack of inventive step. The applicant successfully appealed the decision. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision of T 2353/22 dated October 10, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) 3.5.07.

Key takeaways

A “data element” and a “transformation” are not further specified in the claim and can thus not be seen as technical entities except for the fact that they are stored in computer memory.

The fact that the ultimate goal of the claimed method is not technical is not sufficient to conclude that the whole implementation is not technical.

The skilled person searches a technical solution based on their ordinary technical skills, common general knowledge and knowledge of the prior art. Each claim feature, or each aspect of a claim feature, is either a contribution of the non-technical expert, e.g. an expert on graph models, in which case it can appear in the formulation of the technical problem to be solved, or a contribution of the technical expert, in which case it is part of the technical solution.

In the assessment of technical contribution and inventive step, the claim should not be analysed as a collection of disconnected terms but as a whole.

The data structure specified in the claim serves the technical purpose of providing access to the data stored in memory and thus makes a technical contribution.

The invention

The invention concerns a method, a system and a device for supporting the storage of, access to and display of lineage metadata about data stored in a storage system. The lineage metadata of a data object provides information about the sources from which the data object was derived. For instance, how the data object was generated, from which source it was imported, how it has been used by applications, how it relates to other datasets or how its modification will affect tables.

Fig. 3 of EP3549036

Here is how the invention was defined by independent claim 1:

Claim 1 (main request)

A method performed by a data processing apparatus, the method including:

receiving a portion of metadata (106, 112A, 112B, 112C, 128) from a data source (110A, 110B, 110C), the portion of metadata (106, 112A, 112B, 112C, 128) describing nodes and edges, wherein each node represents a metadata object and at least some of the edges each represent a one-way effect of one node upon another node, each edge having a single direction, and wherein a metadata object is a data element (202A) or a transformation (204A);

generating instances of a data structure (134, 300) representing the portion of metadata (106, 112A, 112B, 112C, 128) and storing the instances of the data structure (134, 300) in random access memory;

at least a first instance of the instances of the data structure (134, 300) including:

an identification value that identifies a node that corresponds to the first instance of the instances of the data structure (134, 300),

one or more property values representing respective properties of the corresponding node, and

a pointer (320A, 320B) that includes a reference to a memory location (322A, 322B) associated with a portion of the random access memory, the portion of the random access memory storing a second instance of the instances of the data structure (134, 300) that corresponds to another node, the pointer (320A, 320B) representing an edge (316A-316D) associated with the other node that corresponds to the second instance of the instances of the data structure (134, 300), wherein the edge represents an effect the node that corresponds to the first instance has on the other node that corresponds to the second instance, or an effect the other node that corresponds to the second instance has on the node that corresponds to the first instance;

receiving a query (114, 126) for lineage metadata, said query including an identification of at least one particular element of data,

wherein the query (114, 126) includes an identification of a type of lineage and a walk plan (130, 132, 400) that identifies which types of nodes and edges are relevant to the identified type of lineage, and wherein the walk plan (130, 132, 400) includes conditions for following an edge or for collecting an edge or an instance of the data structure based on one or more property values representing respective properties of a corresponding node, wherein an edge is followed by accessing a memory location identified by a pointer representing the followed edge, and wherein an instance of a data structure is collected by adding data of the collected instance to lineage metadata to be returned in response to the query, and wherein an edge is collected by adding data representing the collected edge to lineage metadata to be returned in response to the query;

and

in response to receiving the query (114, 126), traversing the data structure (134) in accordance with the walk plan (130) to collect lineage metadata stored in the data structure (134) that is responsive to the query (114), including:

accessing data stored using the data structure (134, 300), including accessing the first instance of the instances of the data structure (134, 300), the first instance of the instances of the data structure (134,300) identified by a first identifier that corresponds to the particular element of data identified by the query (114, 126);

accessing the pointer (320A, 320B) of the first instance;

accessing the second instance of the instances of the data structure (134, 300), the second instance of the instances of the data structure (134, 300) identified by a second identifier, the second identifier being stored at the memory location (322A, 322B) referenced by the pointer (320A, 320B) of the first instance;

collecting data of the second instance of the instances of the data structure (134, 300); and

based on the data stored using the data structure (134,300), generating a response to the query (114, 126), the response including the lineage metadata (106, 112A, 112B, 112C, 122, 128) responsive to the query, the lineage metadata (106, 112A, 112B, 112C, 122, 128) describing a sequence of nodes and edges, wherein one of the nodes of the sequence represents the particular element of data, and wherein the lineage metadata further includes data representing the other node that is associated with the second identifier; and

sending the response containing the lineage metadata (106, 112A, 112B, 112C, 122, 128) to a computer system (116) for causing a display of the computer system (116) to display a representation of lineage of the particular element of data in form of a lineage diagram (200A-200E) generated based on the lineage metadata,

wherein the relationship among the nodes shown in the lineage diagram (200A-200E) corresponds to the edge (316A-316D) represented by the pointer (320A, 320B).

Is it patentable?

The ED found that the independent claims of the main request lacked an inventive step:

5.1 In the decision under appeal, the examining division decided that the method of claim 1 defined “an abstract graph model of data lineage describing a network of nodes and edges, in the form of a customized query processing formulation” which was “void of any further technical considerations”. The only features of claim 1 which were technical were the features “storing”, “random access”, “computer”, and “for causing a display of the computer system”. The application did not describe “any technical interaction between the apparent non-technical features and the technical features”, besides the use of a computer to perform the method.

The examining division was of the opinion that no technical effect serving a technical purpose could be derived from the claim wording. The description disclosed non-technical purposes of the metadata, e.g. finding out the meaning of business terms, the relationship between those terms and the data to which the terms referred. These were non-technical aspects of an administrative task. In the context of general-purpose computers, pointers referencing memory locations inevitably had to be used. They were thus regarded as an integral part of the general purpose computer.

The TBA partially confirmed the ED’s findings:

5.3 The board agrees with the decision under appeal that the lineage data itself should not be considered “a technical state of the underlying hardware”, as argued by the appellant, or as “data about a technical process” or “conditions prevailing in an apparatus or system” within the meaning of decisions T 1670/07, T 115/85 and T 756/06 cited by the appellant. A “data element” and a “transformation” are not further specified in the claim and can thus not be seen as technical entities (see also T 1670/07, Reasons 12; T 756/06, Reasons 13), except for the fact that they are stored in computer memory. The display of lineage information thus corresponds to presentation of information as such under Article 52(2)(d) and (3) EPC and does not make a technical contribution.

The TBA then pointed out some deficiencies in the ED’s decision:

5.4 However, the fact that the ultimate goal of the claimed method is not technical is not sufficient to conclude that the whole implementation is not technical (T 619/02, Reasons 2.1). The board agrees with the appellant that the reasoning of the decision under appeal is not convincing.

5.4.1 In the decision under appeal, the examining division identified the computer programmer as the skilled person (point 11.2.24) and described the “expert in graph models” as a non-technical expert who defines the set of requirement specifications (point 11.2.26). The examining division argued that the abstract graph model was given “to the skilled person who will use a computer to implement it without the use of any ‘further technical considerations’, let alone technical considerations of the internal functioning of the computer” (point 11.2.18). However, in the board’s opinion, in the conventional problem-solution approach as further developed by decision T 641/00 (COMVIK approach), the skilled person solves the objective technical problem by technical means based on technical considerations. If that is not the case, either the skilled person is inaccurately defined or the non-technical features were not added to the formulation of the technical problem to be solved. According to the COMVIK approach, the skilled person is a fictional person skilled in a technical field, who has the task of technically implementing the non-technical requirements passed on to them as part of the technical problem to be solved. The skilled person searches a technical solution based on their ordinary technical skills, common general knowledge and knowledge of the prior art. Each claim feature, or each aspect of a claim feature, is either a contribution of the non-technical expert, e.g. an expert on graph models, in which case it can appear in the formulation of the technical problem to be solved, or a contribution of the technical expert, in which case it is part of the technical solution (see also decision T 2626/18, Reasons 4.13).

5.4.2 The same comment applies to the examining division’s argument that “When automating the method on the computer system comprising a query processing method the computer programmer does not have to overcome any technical problem, commonplace programming skills and computer knowledge will suffice.” (point 11.2.27).

In addition, this statement confuses commonplace features and/or obvious solutions with non-technical subject-matter by expressing that the programmer, who was identified as the technically skilled person, does not have to overcome any technical problem because only commonplace programming skills and computer knowledge are necessary.

It is true that since computer programming involves technical and non-technical aspects, it is difficult to distinguish between the “programmer as such” who, as long as they only develop abstract algorithms, are not a skilled person within the meaning of the case law, and the “technical programmer” (see also T 697/17, reasons 5.2.4). But in the decision under appeal, the programmer was identified as the skilled person who receives the objective technical problem.

5.4.3 The decision under appeal did not take into account all the claim features making a technical contribution.

Citing decision G 1/19 of the Enlarged Board of Appeal, the examining division argued correctly that “merely” performing a method, the result of which did not cause any “technical effect(s) on a physical entity in the real world”, did not suffice to contribute to the technical character of the invention, and that “the mere calculation of the behaviour of a (technical) system as it exists on the computer, and the numerical output of such calculation, should not be equated with a technical effect” (see point 11.2.16). The board notes however, that according to decision G 1/19, “technical effects” or “technical interactions” do not occur only through the generation of “technical output”. Technical contributions can result, for example, from “adaptations to the computer or its operation, which result in technical effects (e.g. better use of storage capacity or bandwidth)” and “technical effects can occur within the computer-implemented process (e.g. by specific adaptations of the computer or of data transfer or storage mechanisms)” (see pages 39 and 40, points c, 85 and 86).

Under point 14.2.1 of the decision under appeal, the examining division argued that “pointers referencing memory locations inevitably have to be used, therefore, they are regarded as an integral part of the general purpose computer that is always implicitly comprised within the general-purpose computer and its usage. Therefore, the reasoning of the applicant that the data structure with the pointer as claimed is a specific implementation is not convincing.”

The board does not agree with this argument. In the assessment of technical contribution and inventive step, the claim should not be analysed as a collection of disconnected terms but as a whole (see e.g. T 731/17, Reasons 6.2 to 6.4; T 1272/20, Reasons 3.1). Even though a pointer to data in computer memory is commonplace, its purposive use in a method for retrieving data from computer memory makes a technical contribution (see e.g. T 1351/04, Reasons 7.2 to 7.4; T 697/17, Reasons 5.2.5; T 3176/19, Reasons 10.3) and cannot be ignored in the inventive-step assessment.

The data structure specified in the claim serves the technical purpose of providing access to the data stored in memory, as claimed for example in features (c3), (e) and (f) and thus makes a technical contribution.

In its preliminary opinion, the TBA introduced prior-art documents D2 to D9 into the appeal proceedings and document D2 was considered as the best starting point for assessing inventive step and closest prior art.

Outcome

The TBA considered that the subject-matter of claim 1 of the main request involves an inventive step.

The case is remitted to the ED with the order to grant a patent.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: decision of T 2353/22 dated October 10, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) 3.5.07.

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Maggie Huang

Maggie is a German and European patent attorney at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG. Her technical background is Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

www.bardehle.com/team/detail/huang-maggie.html

Development and deployment of analytical models: technical effect not decided

This decision concerns a European patent application relating to development and deployment of analytical models. The Examining Division (ED) refused the application for lack of inventive step. The applicant successfully appealed against the decision of the ED. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision of T 1249/22 dated January 13, 2025, of Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) 3.5.06.

Key takeaways

Underlining words in the text of a claim to identify what is considered “technical” is normally not sufficient to clearly identify the technical and non-technical features of the claimed subject-matter.

The invention

The application relates to the development – including the training – of an analytical model (e.g. a machine learning model) and the deployment of the trained analytical model on a “compute engine” so as to process live incoming data. The application indicates as aim to allow domain experts, as well as data scientists and data engineers, to carry out these tasks quickly and easily. To meet this aim, the application discloses in particular a GUI to manage and deploy different analytical models across different run time environments that creates a layer of abstraction between the user managing the models and the target run time environments.

Fig. 8 of EP3182283

Here is how the invention was defined by independent claim 5:

Claim 5 (main request)

A method (400) comprising:

receiving (402) a selection of an analytical model by model builder circuitry (102) via a communication interface (208);

training (404) the analytical model by the model builder circuitry (102) to create a trained analytical model;

storing (406) the trained analytical model by the model builder (102) circuitry in a model storage database (106);

receiving (410) by model deployment circuitry (104) via the communication interface (208) a selection of the trained analytical model;

retrieving (412) by the model deployment circuitry (104) the trained analytical model from the model storage database (106);

deploying (414) by the model deployment circuitry (104) the trained analytical model on a compute engine (118) to process incoming data and to generate results; and

storing (416) by the model deployment circuitry (104) the results in a results storage database (108),

the method (400) further comprising:

storing (408), by the model builder circuitry (102), model metadata (328) corresponding to the trained analytical model in a model metadata store (112, 242);

wherein storing the model metadata (328) further comprises storing an analytical model parameter for the trained analytical model, a storage location specifier (336) for the trained analytical model, and a storage location specifier (338) for the results of the trained analytical model,

wherein the method (400) further comprises:

upon receiving the selection (410) of the trained analytical model, accessing (412) the model metadata storage database (112) to retrieve the model metadata (328) about the selected trained analytical model, and

reviewing the model storage location metadata (336) to determine where the selected trained analytical model is stored within the model storage database (106),

wherein when retrieving (412) the selected trained analytical model from the model storage database (106) the selected trained analytical model is retrieved from the location within the model storage database (106) as determined from the model storage location metadata (336), and

wherein deploying (414) the trained analytical model on a compute engine (118) to process incoming data and to generate results further comprises:

preparing a processing pipeline by coordinating with an online message queue (120), as a data source, to route messages including live incoming data,

wherein preparing the processing pipeline includes:

creating an message broker topic, publishing the source data to the topic and subscribing the selected trained analytical model to the message broker topic,

coordinating with the compute engine (118) to implement the selected trained analytical model on the live incoming data, and

coordinating with the results storage database (108) to store the generated results from the compute engine (118),

wherein the generated results from the compute engine (118) are written to a log file in the results storage database (108) specified by the storage location specifier (338), and

monitoring the log file;

the method (400) further comprising:

determining (502), by resource allocation circuitry (116) coupled to the model deployment circuitry (104), a resource load and an execution time for the trained analytical model using historical data for execution of the trained analytical model;

determining (506), by the resource allocation circuitry (116), a resource load capability of the compute engine (118); and

determining (508) by the resource allocation circuitry (116) an execution frequency for the trained analytical model on the compute engine (118) based on the resource load, the execution time for the trained analytical model and the resource load capability of the compute engine (118).

The claims of the auxiliary request are not relevant for the present decision.

Is it patentable?

The ED found that the independent claims of the main request lacked an inventive step in view of common general knowledge evidenced by D5 (Grid computing: Making the global infrastructure a reality, Wiley, 2003, ISBN: 978-0-470-85319-1).

The TBA disagreed with the ED. Firstly, the TBA clarified that the approach adopted by the ED for accessing the inventive step was acceptable:

10. The board notes that the examining division did not select a particular piece of prior art as starting point for the assessment of inventive step (as suggested in the Guidelines, G-VII, 5.4, fourth paragraph, point (ii)).

The board does not find fault in this aspect of the examining division’s argumentation.

In the case of an invention that amounts to a technical implementation of a non-technical method (provided the “non-technical method” does not contribute to the technical character of the invention), the board considers it to be a valid approach to

– identify, on the one hand, the non-technical method underlying the invention, and, on the other hand, the features of its technical implementation,

– define as “technical problem” to provide a technical implementation of that non-technical method, provided to the (technically) skilled person as a “non-technical requirement specification” which is part of the technical problem,

– assess whether the skilled person would have solved this technical problem by providing the claimed technical implementation (if so, the claim is not inventive).

Such an approach has been applied in several board of appeal decisions, for instance in T 1027/06 Rewards programs/MARITZ.

11. In this approach, the choice of the IT infrastructure on which the non-technical method is to be implemented is considered to be part of the technical solution and the assessment of inventive step includes assessing whether it would have been obvious to the skilled person to select this IT infrastructure to implement the non-technical method. This is in contrast to starting from that IT infrastructure as “closest prior art” and formulating the (objective) technical problem as to provide an implementation of the non-technical method on that IT infrastructure.

In cases where the IT infrastructure used in the invention is a computer system that is commonly used to implement methods of the same kind as the non-technical method (e.g. a generic computer for most applications or a generic client-server architecture for e-business applications), there will be no difference in result between both approaches. There could however be a difference where the choice of a specific IT infrastructure might not have been a straightforward one for the given non-technical method (as noted in T 1325/17 Location-based dating/LOCATOR, reasons 10.2).

However, the TBA found that the ED wrongly assessed the non-technical features:

12.2 First, this is mainly due to the fact that the examining division identifies “technical features” of the claimed subject-matter merely by underlining parts of the text of claim 5 and implies that the remainder of the claim are its “non-technical features” (decision, points 14.2 and 14.3).

…

In simple cases, it may be possible to somehow “reconstruct” from the two bags of words what the respective sets of (meaningful) technical and non-technical features and thus the non-technical requirements are, but this is not the case here.

Underlining words in the text of a claim to identify what is considered “technical” is normally not sufficient to clearly identify the technical and non-technical features of the claimed subject-matter.

…

12.6 Hence, the board cannot derive from the decision, what precisely the examining division considered to be the non-technical features of the method of claim 5 and thus the “non-technical requirements” referred to in point 14.7 of the decision.

The board is therefore not in a position to review whether the technical problem including the “non-technical requirements” has been correctly defined.

Moreover, the TBA recognized that the ED did not adopt the COMVIK approach:

13.1 The examining division specifies the technical features “A” to “D” stripped of all the alleged non-technical aspects (e.g. decision, point 14.6: “storing (file) data in a database, using storage location specifiers”, without indicating that the storage location specifiers are inter alia for the trained analytical model) and appears then to only assess their obviousness in isolation of the rest of the claim (decision, point 14.6: “When considering only the technical features of claim 5, […]”).

This is however not sufficient to show that the skilled person, confronted with the technical problem including the non-technical requirements, would have arrived at the claimed technical implementation of the non-technical method.

In this exercise, it is normally not possible to perform a meaningful obviousness analysis by completely disregarding the non-technical aspects of the claim, as they are normally the raison d’être for the claimed combination of technical features relating to their implementation. This is taken account of by including these non-technical aspects in the technical problem as non-technical requirements (in accordance with T 641/00 Two identities/COMVIK, headnote II). This, in turn, ensures that an inventive step will not be found because the non-technical aspects are non-obvious, as required by the principle expressed in T 641/00, headnote I, that only features contributing to the technical character of a claimed invention may support the presence of an inventive step.

In T 688/05 Ticket auctioning system/TICKETMASTER, headnote and reasons 4.5, similar considerations were expressed by saying that features making no technical contribution “may well form the only logical link between technical features resulting from their implementation” and that “they must therefore be taken into consideration for the examination as to inventive step while at the same time not being permitted to contribute to it.” This is, for instance, what is done in T 1027/06 (cited above), reasons 10.

13.2 In some cases, it is possible to treat groups of technical features separately from each other, but this requires a proper definition of the respective partial technical problems solved by them and an explanation of why this approach is justified in the case at hand.

It may also be possible to argue that a skilled person confronted with the general technical problem of providing a technical implementation of a given non-technical method, after having selected a particular IT infrastructure in a first step towards a solution, would necessarily have been confronted with several separate sub-problems arising when having to implement the non-technical method on that IT infrastructure (see e.g. T 1158/02 Vehicle web access/ICO SERVICES, reasons 3.9, for similar considerations).

But none of this has been argued by the examining division.

Outcome

The TBA considered the decision of the ED not to be sufficiently “reasoned” within the meaning of Rule 111(2) EPC, which amounts to a substantial procedural violation with the meaning of Rule 103(1)(a) EPC and a fundamental deficiency within that of Article 11 RPBA.

The case is remitted to the ED for further prosecution.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: decision of T 1249/22 dated January 13, 2025, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.06.

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Maggie Huang

Maggie is a German and European patent attorney at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG. Her technical background is Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

www.bardehle.com/team/detail/huang-maggie.html

Consent categories in head-mounted displays: non-technical

This decision concerns a European patent related to a head-mounted display system that captures and processes eye images. The Opposition Division (OD) maintained the patent in an amended form according to auxiliary request 1. However, the opponent appealed, and the proprietor defended the patent with additional auxiliary requests 2 to 7. Ultimately, the Technical Board of Appeal revoked the patent. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision of T 0371/23 dated January 20, 2025, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.05.

Key takeaways

Implementing user consent categories for sharing biometric information in head-mounted display systems is considered an administrative scheme and does not contribute to the technical character of an invention.

The invention

The patent pertains to a head-mounted display system designed to capture eye images of the wearer, determine biometric information from these images, and present a user interface requesting consent to share this information. The system allows users to select consent categories, and based on their input, it controls the transmission of specific biometric data.

Fig. 2 of EP3433707

Here is how the invention was defined by claim 1:

Claim 1 (auxiliary request 1)

A head mounted display system comprising:

an image capture device (452) configured to capture eye images of an eye;

a display (208) configured to display virtual images to the eye (302, 304, 410) of a wearer (204) of the head mounted display (200, 400, 710); and

a hardware processor (224, 228, 450) programmed to:

obtain the eye images of the wearer captured by the image capture device;

determine biometric information of the wearer based at least in part on the eye images, wherein the biometric information is associated with physiological or behavioral characteristics of the wearer;

display a user interface comprising a popup (824) including a consent request that includes a plurality of consent categories for the biometric information, wherein the plurality of consent categories includes a first consent category and a second consent category, and wherein the popup includes interactive buttons that are configured to receive input from the wearer indicating consent to share at least a portion of the biometric information;

receive a response to the consent request, wherein the response includes a consent indication from the wearer;

in response to a determination that the consent indication indicates that the wearer has not agreed to the first consent category, suppress transmission of biometric information that is associated with the first consent category, and;

in response to a determination that the consent indication indicates that the wearer has agreed to the second consent category, transmit, to an acquirer device, the biometric information that is associated with the second consent category.”

Claim 1 (auxiliary request 2)

Claim 1 of auxiliary request 2 differs from claim 1 of auxiliary request 1 as follows (with the deletions [deleted: struck through]):

“[…]

determine biometric information of the wearer based at least in part on the eye images, wherein the biometric information is associated with physiological [deleted: or behavioral] characteristics of the wearer; […]”.

Claim 1 (auxiliary request 3)

Claim 1 of auxiliary request 3 differs from claim 1 of auxiliary request 2 as follows (with the additions underlined and the deletions [deleted: struck through]):

“A head mounted display system comprising:

a[deleted: n] first image capture device (452) configured to capture eye images of an eye;

a second image capture device configured to capture a plurality of outside world images;

a display (208) configured to display virtual images to the eye (302, 304, 410) of a wearer (204) of the head mounted display (200,400, 710); and

a hardware processor (224,228,450) programmed to:

obtain the eye images of the wearer captured by the first image capture device;

[…]

display, on the display (208), a user interface comprising a popup (824) including a consent request for biometric information from a biometric information acquirer computing device, the consent request including [deleted: that includes] a plurality of consent categories for the biometric information, wherein the plurality of consent categories includes a first consent category and a second consent category, and wherein the popup includes interactive buttons that are configured to receive input from the wearer indicating consent to share at least a portion of the biometric information;

[…]

in response to a determination that the consent indication indicates that the wearer has agreed to the second consent category, transmit, to [deleted: an] the acquirer computing device, the biometric information that is associated with the second consent category.”

Claim 1 (auxiliary request 4)

Claim 1 of auxiliary request 4 differs from claim 1 of auxiliary request 3 as follows (with the additions underlined and the deletions [deleted: struck through]):

“[…]

in response to a determination that the consent indication indicates that the wearer has not agreed to the first consent category, [deleted: suppress transmission of] not transmit biometric information that is associated with the first consent category, and; […]”.

Claim 1 (auxiliary request 5)

Claim 1 of auxiliary request 5 differs from claim 1 of auxiliary request 3 as follows (with the additions underlined):

“[…]

in response to a determination that the consent indication indicates that the wearer has not agreed to the first consent category, not transmit biometric information that is associated with the first consent category, and if a transmission of biometric information exists due to a prior consent of the wearer, suppress transmission of transmit biometric information that is associated with the first consent category, and; […]”.

Claim 1 (auxiliary request 6)

Claim 1 of auxiliary request 6 differs from claim 1 of auxiliary request 5 as follows (with the additions underlined and the deletions [deleted: struck through]):

“A system (700) comprising a plurality of [deleted: A] head mounted display systems (710), a plurality of biometric information acquirer computing devices (715) and a biometric information exchange system (705) for exchanging information between wearable display systems (710) and biometric information acquirer computing devices (715) through a network (720), each head mounted display system (710) comprising: […]”.

Claim 1 (auxiliary request 7)

Claim 1 of auxiliary request 7 differs from claim 1 of auxiliary request 6 as follows (with the additions underlined and the deletions [deleted: struck through]):

“[…]

in response to a determination that the consent indication indicates that the wearer has agreed to the second consent category, transmit, to the acquirer computing device, the biometric information that is associated with the second consent category,

wherein the biometric information corresponds to at least one of eye patterns, eye movements, eye fixations, or eye browsing history.”

Is it patentable?

D1 (US 2014/0139551 A1) was considered as the closest prior art.

Auxiliary request 1

The Board disagreed with the OD and found that the subject matter of claim 1 of auxiliary request 1 lacks an inventive step because the distinguishing features merely implement an administrative scheme and do not contribute to the technical character of the invention:

1.4 The board does not agree with the opposition division. As the opponent rightly observed, the human-machine interaction in the case at hand does not control in any manner how the technical transmission of data actually takes place. The user’s consent does not change the way how information is technically transmitted. Instead, it merely gives the user’s approval to the categories of information which can be shared with third parties. However, it is not a “technical task” to give consent to sharing of information. In the absence of a technical task, the opposition division’s application of the test of T 336/14 and T 1802/13 fails from the very beginning. Instead, as the opponent again rightly argues, distinguishing features F1.4.3 to F1.4.8 are merely the implementation of an administrative scheme which cannot contribute to the technical character of the claimed invention.

Auxiliary requests 2 to 7

The Board found no inventive step in auxiliary requests 2 to 7:

2.2 As to their substantiation, the proprietor briefly stated for each auxiliary request that it “addresses the objection of insufficiency of disclosure”, “addresses the objection of added subject-matter” or “addresses inter alia the objections of inventive step”. However, it did not further substantiate how these requests actually addressed the opponent’s objections.

2.3 In its preliminary opinion issued under Article 15(1) RPBA, the board stated that, irrespective of admittance issues, the board agreed with the opponent that the objection of lack of inventive step against auxiliary request 1 applied mutatis mutandis to auxiliary requests 2 to 7.

2.4 The proprietor did not reply in substance to the board’s preliminary opinion. After reconsideration, the board sees no reason to change its preliminary opinion.

Outcome

The Board found that claim 1 of all auxiliary requests lacked an inventive step. Hence, the Board dismissed the appeal and the patent is revoked.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: T 0371/23 dated January 20, 2025, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.05.

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Maggie Huang

Maggie is a German and European patent attorney at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG. Her technical background is Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

www.bardehle.com/team/detail/huang-maggie.html

Displaying story album: non-technical

This decision concerns a European patent application relating to a a story album display method and apparatus. The application was refused by the Examining Division. The applicant filed an appeal but was not successful. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision of T 0646/23 dated December 9, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.07.

Key takeaways

A mere processing of non-technical textual information does not make a technical contribution.

Improving the accuracy of search results to correspond more closely to the user’s subjective wishes is in principle not a technical effect.

Normal physical consequences of non-technical decisions cannot support an inventive step.

The invention

The application relates to a story album. The story album function is as follows: A terminal automatically aggregates images in a gallery to make one or more story albums, so that a user can quickly and conveniently review photos of some past important events (cf. paragraph [0002]).

Fig. 6 of EP3706015

Here is how the invention was defined by claim 1:

Claim 1 (main request)

A story album display method, comprising:

aggregating, by a terminal, N images in a gallery based on a first dimension, wherein the first dimension comprises a photographing time and/or a photographing location, and N > 1; and

performing, by the terminal, screening on the N images in the gallery, wherein the performing screening comprises identifying content of each image in the gallery, and removing, by the terminal, an invalid image from the N images, to obtain the story album comprising M images, wherein the invalid image comprises an image with an invalid label, or one or more images with an image similarity greater than a threshold; and

displaying, by the terminal, an album cover of a story album, wherein the story album comprises the M images in the N images, the M images are associated with a theme of the story album, and M < N.

Claim 1 (auxiliary request 4)

Claim 1 of the fourth auxiliary request differs from claim 1 of the main request in that the text “performing, by the terminal, screening on the N images in the gallery, wherein the performing screening comprises identifying content of each image in the gallery, and” has been deleted and in that the following text has been inserted after “an image similarity greater than a threshold;”:

“determining, by the terminal based on a second dimension, a theme associated with the M images, to obtain the theme of the story album, wherein the second dimension comprises an image feature of at least one of the M images;

modifying, by the terminal, the theme of the story album based on a third dimension, wherein the third dimension comprises association information that is in a target application and that is associated with the theme of the story album;”.

Is it patentable?

D1 (EP 2 187 322 A1) was considered as the closest prior art. The Examining Division refused the application for lack of inventive step over D1. The Board of Appeal in charge arrived at the same conclusion:

Main request and auxiliary requests 1 to 3

The Board found that claim 1 of the main request is not clear. The same reasonings are also applied to claim 1 of auxiliary requests 1 to 3.

4.3 The board notes, however, that the claimed “removing” step does not in any way link the step of “identifying content” or its result to the “invalid label” or to the determination of images “with an image similarity greater than a threshold”. Claim 1 does not express that “screening” an image including “identifying content” of the image means, in one alternative, retrieving a metadata label of the image. Nor does claim 1 express that “image similarity” between one or more images is determined on the basis of the identification of the content of the images.

Although the skilled reader of claim 1 may understand that some kind of link between “identifying content” and the “removing” step is intended, on the basis of the wording of the claim they can only speculate what that link might be.

The board therefore concludes that claim 1 of the main request is not clear (Article 84 EPC).

Auxiliary request 4

Claim 1 of auxiliary request 4 was not objected for lacking of clarity. Claim 1 of the fourth auxiliary request is directed to a “story album display method”. According to claim 1:

(a) A terminal first selects (“aggregates”) N images from an image collection on the basis of photographing time or photographing location.
(b) The terminal then removes a number of images that are determined to be “invalid” to obtain M remaining images, where M < N. An image may be determined to be invalid if it has an “invalid label” or if its “image similarity” to another image is greater than a threshold (“wherein the invalid image comprises an image with an invalid label, or one or more images with an image similarity greater than a threshold”). The remaining M images form a “story album”.
(c) On the basis of “an image feature of at least one of the M images”, the terminal determines a “theme associated with the M images”. The terminal modifies this theme, referred to as “the theme of the story album”, on the basis of “association information that is in a target application and that is associated with the theme of the story album”.
(d) The terminal then displays an “album cover” of the story album.

The Board found that claim 1 of auxiliary request 4 differs from the terminal of D1 in that the terminal includes software functionality to select a subset of images from the image collection on the basis of criteria involving image similarity and image metadata, where the image metadata includes photographing time, photographing location and image labels or tags (items (a) and (b)). An image of this subset is then selected for display as “album cover” (item (d)).

However, the Board found that the above difference does not make a technical contribution:

This software functionality, however, does not make a technical contribution. Indeed, it cannot be seen what specific technical effect is achieved by the selection of a subset of images from a larger set of images on the basis of these criteria or by the selection of an “album cover” image from the selected subset of images.

Although a specific implementation in software or hardware of such non-technical functionality may in certain cases have technical aspects, for example relating to determining image similarity, technical details of such an implementation are not claimed.

The Board found that claim 1 of auxiliary request 4 further differs from the terminal of D1 in that a “theme” is determined for the subset of M images on the basis of an “image feature” of one of the M images and “association information” such as calendar information, in accordance with item (c).

The Board found that the above difference does not credibly solve a technical problem:

A method of classifying (or recognising) images on the basis of features extracted from the visual content of the images may in certain cases be technical, in particular if it is based on technical considerations relating to image processing. However, the claim leaves the kind of “image feature” undefined, and paragraph [0137] of the description explains that the theme may be determined on the basis of “image features” reflected by the textual labels associated with the M images. Hence, the determination of a “theme” in the present case encompasses a mere processing of non-technical textual information, which does not make a technical contribution.

…

Moreover, even if the claimed image selection somehow reliably returns what the user is looking for (which is unlikely given that the method does not require the user to give an indication of what they are looking for), improving the accuracy of search results to correspond more closely to the user’s subjective wishes is in principle not a technical effect.

…

In the present case, claim 1 does not define any user-interface mechanism for allowing a user to search an image, let alone a new mechanism.

…

Claim 1 does not specify in any detail how the “story album” image selection of first N images and later M < N images is represented in memory. Such an image selection can be represented, for example, as a bitmap indicating which images of the complete collection of images stored on the phone are part of the selection and which are not. In this case, the “removal” of an image from the selection amounts to flipping the bit corresponding to the image from 1 to 0, and no reduction of memory usage is achieved by reducing the number of images in the selection from N to M.

It is therefore not credible that a reduction in working memory usage is achieved over essentially the whole scope of the claim.

7.8.2 Moreover, even if the removal of an image from the “story album” selection did reduce memory usage, this would merely be the physical consequence of the non-technical decision to remove certain images. Memory usage could be even further reduced by removing all but one image, or by not creating the selection at all. Such normal physical consequences of non-technical decisions cannot support an inventive step (see decision T 2230/10, Reasons 3.7 and 3.8).

Outcome

The Board found that claim 1 of auxiliary request 4 lacks an inventive step over a well-known prior-art smartphone. Auxiliary requests 5 and 6 were late filed and not admitted. Finally, the Board dismissed the appeal.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: T 0646/23 dated December 9, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.07.

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Maggie Huang

Maggie is a German and European patent attorney at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG. Her technical background is Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

www.bardehle.com/team/detail/huang-maggie.html

Displaying an animation of coupling of list items: non-technical

This decision concerns a European patent application relating to a UI (User Interface) that displays a plurality of thumbnail images on a display screen. The application was refused by the Examining Division. The applicant filed an appeal but was not successful. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision of T 1042/22 dated February 29, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.05.

Key takeaways

GUIs are at the “borderline of patentability”.

GUIs and associated user experiences belong to the sphere of non-technical artistic activity, graphic design and animation.

Features related to user input with physical ergonomic advantages are “more likely” to have technical character than those related to output or to subjective or aesthetic preferences.

The invention

The application relates to an information processing device including a display control unit configured to display a plurality of lists including a first list and a second list each having list items; and perform display of coupling to the first list a list item of the second list that is a sub-list of the first list (see abstract).

Fig. 1 of EP2555104

Here is how the invention was defined by claim 1:

Claim 1 (main request)

(a) An information processing device comprising: a display; a touch panel configured to detect a user operation;

(b) a control unit configured to

(i) detect, on the touch panel, a pinch-out operation when a distance increases between two objects touching the touch panel,

(ii) control to display a first list item and a second list item on the display; wherein the control unit is configured to

(iii) display an animation of coupling of list items in which the first list item appears gradually between existing list items displayed on the screen, when an amount of the pinch-out operation in progress exceeds a first threshold; and

(iv) display an animation of coupling of list items in which the second list item appears gradually between the existing list items displayed on the screen, when the amount of the pinch-out operation in progress exceeds a second threshold which is bigger than the first threshold, wherein a number of list items after the animation of coupling of list items in which the second list item appears is increased compared to the number of list items after the animation of coupling of list items in which the first list item appears;

(c) wherein an amount of the pinch-out operation comprises: a movement amount or a movement speed of the two objects touching the touch panel; and

(d) the animations of coupling of list items are displayed regardless of a position of the pinch-out operation on the touch panel.

Is it patentable?

D6 (EP 1 942 401 A1) was considered as the closest prior art. The Examining Division refused the application for lack of inventive step over D6. The Board of Appeal in charge arrived at the same conclusion:

Features (iii) and (iv)

Regarding features (iii) and (iv), the appellant tried to argue that the GUI solves a technical problem, which was denied by the Board:

1.3 Regarding features (iii) and (iv), the appellant argued that they enabled the user to recognise the list items to be inserted by the “coupling” before the completion of the “coupling of list items”. It formulated the objective technical problem solved by these features as how to allow a user to perform “coupling of list items” in an easy, intuitive and time-saving manner. The appellant did not contest that the display of “animations” within the meaning of features (iii) and (iv) constitutes a “presentation of information”. Instead, referring in particular to T 336/14 and T 1802/13, it argued that the presentation of information at hand credibly assisted the user in performing a “technical task” by means of a continued and guided human-machine interaction process. The appellant considered “controlling a device based on user input” to be the “technical task” in the case at hand. It argued that “the control of a device based on physical parameters” such as the “amount of the pinch-out operation” and “thresholds” was a “technical control operation”. It further argued that, based on the “visual feedback” provided by the animations of features (iii) and (iv), the user had better control over the device and could, for example, “cancel the coupling of the lists” during the process and revert to the previous state without finishing the coupling process.

However, the board holds that the animations at hand have obviously nothing to do with “controlling the display device”; neither the animations displayed nor the user’s reaction to them are meant to “control” how the display technology behind the display device actually runs. Instead, the “visual feedback” provided by the “animations” of features (iii) and (iv) is related to the so-called operation of “coupling of list items”, which is not a technical task. The fact that it is performed on a screen does not make the task technical. To the contrary, GUIs and associated user experiences belong to the sphere of non-technical artistic activity, graphic design and animation (see T 1681/18, Reasons 2 and T 1762/18, Reasons 3).

1.4 The appellant also emphasised that the “visual feedback” provided by the “animations” of features (iii) and (iv) gave the user better control of the result of their input, allowing more efficient and ergonomically improved interaction with the GUI. The appellant was aware that, according to the case law of the boards of appeal, GUIs were, as the appellant put it, at the “borderline of patentability”. Indeed, most of the decisions it cited, including T 336/14 and T 1802/13, had come to a negative conclusion in this regard. However, repeating statements from the case law that leave an open door for “exceptional cases” and referring to the Guidelines for Examination, which indicate that features related to user input with physical ergonomic advantages were “more likely” to have technical character than those related to output or to subjective or aesthetic preferences, the appellant pleaded that the case at hand was such an “exceptional case”.

However, in the absence of a tangible and credible technical effect beyond the realm of the GUI, ergonomic improvements in interaction with GUIs remain non-technical improvements in design. Thus, features (iii) and (iv) do not contribute to the technical character of the invention.

Feature (d)

Regarding feature (d), the appellant tried to argue which similar reasonings as used for features (iii) and (iv), which did not convince the Board.

Auxiliary requests

The appellant added more features in the auxiliary request 1, but it failed with similar reasonings as for the main request. Auxiliary requests 2 and 3 were first filed on appeal and were not admitted by the Board due to lack of justification.

Outcome

Finally, the Board dismissed the appeal.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: T 1042/22 dated February 29, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.05.

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Maggie Huang

Maggie is a German and European patent attorney at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG. Her technical background is Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

www.bardehle.com/team/detail/huang-maggie.html

Improving image quality based on user’s preferences: non-technical

This decision concerns a European patent application relating to an information processing apparatus and method for providing content data to a terminal device. The application was refused by the Examining Division. The applicant filed an appeal but was not successful. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision of T 0631/08 dated March 7, 2014, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.01.

Key takeaways

The improvement of image quality (resolution etc) is possibly, but not necessarily, a technical process.

The invention

Claim 1 defines an information-processing apparatus for providing content data to a terminal device, i.e. essentially a content server. Its functions encompass, in a first stage, the storage of features of image data which are of interest to certain users connected via a terminal device to the content server, including an exemplary “target user” and a “similar user” as defined in the claim. Subsequently, this information is used to improve the image quality of a part of an image transmitted to the target user. The improved image part comprises features which resemble those that have been found to be of interest to the similar user, and which can thus be assumed to be of interest to the target user. The improvement is relative, namely “more than” the image quality of the other parts of the image data. Hence, according to the appellant, a reduction of the amount of the image data to be transmitted to the target user is achieved since only the areas of interest have to be transmitted in high-quality.

Fig. 11 of EP1197902

Here is how the invention was defined by claim 1:

Claim 1 (sole request)

An information processing apparatus for providing content data to a terminal device, said information processing apparatus comprising:

content data storage means (71) for storing a plurality of pieces of content data;

communication means (73) for transmitting the content data stored in said content data storage means to a plurality of terminal devices (1) and for receiving input information of each user for the transmitted content data; and

input information storage means (75) for storing said input information received by said communication means for each user;

the apparatus being characterised by:

analysis means (76) for analysing a preference of a target user on the basis of the input information of a similar user, which resembles the input information of said target user stored in said input information storage means; and

processing means (72) for processing content data itself to be transmitted to said terminal device into value-added content for said target user according to the analysis results by said analysis means, wherein said content data storage means (101) stores a plurality of pieces of image data, and said communication means (103) receives positional information within said image data indicated by each of said users, said positional information indicating the centre of an area of said image data comprising features which are of interest to each of said users, and said analysis means (106) comprises extraction means for extracting said positional information of said similar user, which shows that an image area comprising features resembling the features comprised within an image area indicated by said positional information of the target user, stored in said input information storage means (105), is indicated, and said processing means (102) improves the image quality of a part of the image data specified on the basis of said positional information of said similar user, extracted by said extraction means (106), more than the image quality of the other parts of the image data.

Is it patentable?

D1 (WO 00/02389 A1) was considered as the closest prior art. The Examining Division found that the invention was to be considered as an obvious computer implementation of non-technical business rules and did not solve any technical problem. Thus, the Examining Division refused the application for lack of inventive step.

The Board of Appeal in charge arrived at the same conclusion:

Firstly, the Board concluded that D1 does not disclose the following features:

4. Present claim 1 defines, as differences to the prior art, a specific profiling of user preferences and a processing step for improving image quality. The preferences of the target user for particular features of image data are determined by analysing the input information delivered from a similar user, i.e. by analysing and storing the input of another user who has similar interests as the target user regarding the features extracted from the image data.

Then, the Board concluded that the technical contribution provided by the these features does not go beyond the normal computer implementation of a non-technical concept of user profiling and content presentation:

5. Determining and storing user profiles is typically done for promotion and marketing purposes and does per se not involve the use of technical means or any other technical aspects. Compilation and analysis of data concerning human behaviour and interests are activities closely related to business methods which are excluded from patentability. The Board considers that such activities as profiling of human behaviour for promotion or other business purposes lack technical character and are as such not able to contribute to inventive step even if carried out as a computer implemented process. The appellant has argued that the invention provides an innovative way of choosing the parts of an image that are likely to be of interest to a user. The Board cannot accept this argument since the claimed process performs the same steps a human being might choose to take in the same circumstances, viz. collect information about users’ interests (non-technical), group the users accordingly (non-technical), and present information to a target user on the assumption of similarities of personal interests (non-technical). Merely automating this process involved no inventive step.

6. There remains in claim 1 the step of improving the image quality. Unlike profiling, the improvement of image quality (resolution etc) is possibly, but not necessarily, a technical process. An improvement of image quality for aesthetic purposes, for example, would normally not contribute to the technical solution of a technical problem and thus not qualify as technical in terms of a patentable invention. Present claim 1 defines that the image quality of the image parts likely to be of interest according to the target user’s preferences is improved “more than the image quality of the other parts of the image data” (see the claim wording). Hence, the improvement is only a relative improvement between parts of the image, and can in fact be achieved by decreasing the quality of other parts of the image without any improvement of image quality at all (see eg dependent claim 8). Hence, the claimed processing means does not necessarily improve the technical image transmission and rendering process but is simply employed to attract the user’s attention to certain information contents, i.e. a kind of “value-added content” as referred to in claim 1. The image improvement as defined in claim 1 is thus not a technical function or feature of the invention and does consequently not contribute to inventive step.

Finally, the Board concluded that the requirement of inventive step is not fulfilled. Hence, the appeal was dismissed.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: T 0631/08 dated March 7, 2014, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.01.

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Maggie Huang

Maggie is a German and European patent attorney at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG. Her technical background is Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

www.bardehle.com/team/detail/huang-maggie.html

Providing augmented reality overlays in the context of social networks based on geographic location: technical (but obvious)

This decision concerns a European patent application relating to techniques for providing augmented reality overlays in the context of social networks based on geographic location. The application was refused by the Examining Division. The applicant filed an appeal but was not successful. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision of T 1066/22 dated October 28, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.06.

Key takeaways

Being able to use features/applications offline is a desire that can be assumed.

The invention

The application relates to techniques for providing augmented reality overlays in the context of social networks and content creation for posting on such networks. Machine learning models based on geographic location are used to recognize objects in the users’ camera view and recommend, or apply, appropriate overlays. When the user changes location, the machine learning models are replaced accordingly.

Fig. 1 of EP3343441

Here is how the invention was defined by claim 1:

Claim 1 (main request)

A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving, by a computing system, user location information indicative of a location of a user;

identifying (402), by the computing system, one or more objects depicted in a camera view of a camera application displayed on a display based on a first object recognition machine learning model, wherein the first object recognition machine learning model is selected from a plurality of object recognition machine learning models based on the user location information;

determining (404), by the computing system, an augmented reality overlay based on the one or more objects identified in the camera view; and

modifying (406), by the computing system, the camera view based on the augmented reality overlay;

wherein an object-based augmented reality overlay module (104) provides augmented reality overlays based on objects detected in the camera view using automated object recognition techniques, wherein machine learning models are trained to identify objects depicted in the camera view,

wherein location information is utilized to assist in determining what objects are being depicted in the camera view, wherein, if located in a particular location, objects that are specific to other locations are removed from consideration,

wherein a plurality of machine learning models is trained, where each machine learning model is associated with a particular location such that each machine learning model is trained to identify objects associated with the particular location,

wherein the method is characterized in that: based on the location information, machine learning models are downloaded such that object recognition is performed locally on the user’s mobile device using the downloaded machine learning models, wherein

as the location changes, machine learning models associated with previous location information are removed and replaced with machine learning models associated with the current location.

Is it patentable?

D4 (MIN WEIQING ET AL: “A survey on context-aware mobile visual recognition”) was considered as the closest prior art. The Examining Division refused the application for inter alia lack of inventive step over D4. The Board of Appeal in charge arrived at the same conclusion:

Firstly, the Board concluded that D4 does not disclose the following features:

“based on the location information, machine learning models are downloaded such that object recognition is performed locally on the user’s mobile device using the downloaded machine learning models,

wherein as the location changes, machine learning models associated with previous location information are removed and replaced with machine learning models associated with the current location”.

On the contrary, in D4, the location-based classifiers reside on the server (i.e., instead of being downloaded).

According to the Board, those distinguishing features have a technical effect and solve a technical problem, but the solution is obvious:

3. According to the Examining Division (point 4.2 in the decision) the objective technical problem is to allow an offline use of the recognition methods. This requires the download of the location-based object classifiers (point 4.2, see also point 6). The replacing of the older ones is then, in the Examining Division’s view, “standard housekeeping”.

…

5. The Board finds the analysis of the Examining Division to be convincing.

5.1 Being able to use features/applications offline is a desire that users can be assumed (actually, are known) to have had at the relevant priority date. Accordingly, it is a reasonable objective technical problem for the skilled person to address, whether D4 mentions it or not. This requires, necessarily, the download of the location based object classifiers to the device.

5.2 Removing data which is no longer needed appears then as an obvious option, for instance in order to save storage space on the device.

6. Regarding the argument of the Appellant that this analysis overlooks the synergy between the distinguishing features, the Board remarks the following.

6.1 Article 56 EPC states that an invention shall be considered as involving an inventive step if, having regard to the state of the art, it is not obvious to a person skilled in the art.

6.2 As argued above and in agreement with the Examining Division, the Board considers that the invention is the obvious solution of a technical problem that the skilled person would have considered in view of the prior art. The mere fact that the considered technical problem does not reflect all effects achieved by the invention cannot disprove the conclusion that the invention was obvious over the prior art.

Finally, the Board concluded that claim 1 of the main request lacks an inventive step. All the other requests could not overcome this objection. Hence, the appeal was dismissed.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: T 1066/22 dated October 28, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.06.

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Maggie Huang

Maggie is a German and European patent attorney at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG. Her technical background is Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

www.bardehle.com/team/detail/huang-maggie.html

Obtaining position information of a moving body: non-technical

This decision concerns a European patent relating to a display device including a present position information obtaining unit configured to obtain present position information of a moving body and a display control unit. The patent was maintained in an amended form after opposition proceedings but revoked entirely after the subsequent appeal proceedings. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision of T 1596/21 dated July 12, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.04.

Key takeaways

A feature defining a presentation of information produces a technical effect if it credibly assists the user in performing a technical task by means of a continued and/or guided human-machine interaction process.

Lowering the cognitive burden of a driver is not a technical task.

The invention

According to the application, a display device obtains the current position of a moving body and uses a control unit to display information about objects through a transparent member. This member is between the traveler’s viewpoint and the scenery. If the displayed information is too close to the road, the control unit shifts it outward.

Fig. 3 of EP2793193

Here is how the invention was defined by claim 1:

Claim 1 (main request)

A head-up display (2) for a vehicle, the head-up display comprising:

a present position information obtaining unit (4b) configured to obtain present position information of a moving vehicle; and

a display control unit (4) configured to display information on an object through a transparent member based on the present position information, the object being contained in the scenery in the travelling direction of the moving vehicle, the transparent member being positioned between a viewpoint of a driver in the moving vehicle and the scenery;

the head-up display characterized in that :

the display control unit (4) is configured to change a display position of the information on the object to an outward direction of a road (71) in a case that the display position of the information on the object based on the present position information is inside the road (71), the road being contained in the scenery.

Is it patentable?

D3 (US 2004/0193331 A1) was considered as the closest prior art.

The Opposition Division decided that the seventh auxiliary request then on file met the requirements of the EPC.

The Board of Appeal in charge came to a different conclusion and found that claim 1 lacked an inventive step.

Firstly, the Board concluded that D3 does not disclose the following features:

the display control unit (4) is configured to change a display position of the information on the object to an outward direction of a road (71) in a case that the display position of the information on the object based on the present position information is inside the road (71)

Then, the Board assessed whether the above distinguishing features have a technical effect and came to a negative conclusion:

15.1 In line with the established case law of the boards, a feature defining a presentation of information produces a technical effect if it credibly assists the user in performing a technical task by means of a continued and/or guided human-machine interaction process. Such a technical effect is considered credibly achieved if the assistance to the user in performing the technical task is objectively, reliably and causally linked to the feature. This is not the case if the alleged effect depends on subjective interests or preferences of the user (see Case Law of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office, 10th edn., 2022 (CLBoA), I.D.9.2.10 b)).

…

15.3 The board is not convinced that the display position of the information on an object specified in the distinguishing features (i.e. inside or in “an outward direction of a road”) objectively enables a driver to better and more safely control and navigate a vehicle along the road.

Firstly, the board agrees with the opposition division that changing the display position “to an outward direction of a road” does not necessarily mean that the display position is moved completely out of the road (see point 16.7 of the decision under appeal). Thus, the displayed information after the change of display position may still hide a part of the road including objects relevant to the driver’s safety. In such a case, the driver’s safety is conditioned by the scene, not the change in display position.

Secondly, changing the display position “to an outward direction of a road” (possibly to a position as far away from the road as allowed by the size of the transparent member and the display range of the light sources) causes the driver to deviate their gaze from the (central part of) the road, this possibly being detrimental to safety depending on the scene, irrespective of the nature of the object for which information is displayed. Whether this is less detrimental to safety than displaying the information on the object inside (or at a more central position in) the road depends on whether and where objects relevant to the driver’s safety are situated on the road as well as the driver’s preferences and cognitive aptitudes (see page 17 of the statement of grounds of appeal: “subjective preferences”).

As an aside, the board notes that claim 1 also covers cases in which the information on the object is displayed first at a position inside the road and then moved on the transparent member to a position outside the road. Such visual “animation” on the transparent member is clearly detrimental to safety.

…

15.5 Even assuming, arguendo, that the distinguishing features helped the driver focus on certain information (e.g. the information whose display position inside the road is not changed), the board still finds that the distinguishing features have no technical character. As argued by the appellant during the opposition proceedings (see point 19.9 of the decision under appeal) and on page 17 of the statement of grounds of appeal, the distinguishing features do not specify the object or the information that is displayed. Thus, the displayed information may be an indication of the model of a vehicle on the road, the name of a facility on the side of the road or (unspecified) information indicating a road sign already present along the road (i.e. “this is a winding road”). Although the driver may take informed decisions on the basis of such information, the information itself is purely cognitive and does not provide the driver with technical instructions helping them to, for example, avoid accidents (see also CLBoA I.D.9.2.10 c)).

15.6 Paragraph [0053] of the application as filed, cited by the respondent in point 3.5 of the reply to the appeal, specifies that “when the information to be displayed outside the roadway is actually displayed inside the roadway, it could cause misunderstandings to the driver and possibly too much information could be displayed inside the roadway”. In view of this, the problem underlying the patent in fact relates to lowering the cognitive burden of the driver. It is established case law that this problem is not technical (see CLBoA, I.D.9.10 b)i) and iii)).

Finally, the Board concluded that claim 1 of the main request lacks an inventive step. All the other requests could not overcome this objection. Hence, the European patent was revoked.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: T 1596/21 dated July 12, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.04.

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Maggie Huang

Maggie is a German and European patent attorney at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG. Her technical background is Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

www.bardehle.com/team/detail/huang-maggie.html

Storing and retrieving biomedical information: non-technical

This decision concerns a European patent application relating to a system for storing and retrieving biomedical information. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision of T 1199/20 (Medical information service/ACTX) dated July 11, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.01.

Key takeaways

Information modelling (using a data structure) is an intellectual activity and cannot contribute to the technical character of the invention unless it serves a technical purpose.

De facto changes in the memory usage or the processing speed are not suitable criteria for distinguishing between technical and non-technical features.

The invention

The claimed system stores biomedical information in a three-level hierarchical data structure. A node at each level is linked to one or more nodes at the adjacent level(s). Each clinical-action node stores medical information and one or more (Boolean) expressions specifying combinations of genomic variants for which the medical information is relevant. When queried for information about a patient, the system retrieves the medical information of those clinical-action nodes whose expressions match the patient’s genomic variants. The retrieved information may relate e.g. to the effectiveness or adverse effects of a medicament.

Fig. 15 of EP2962270

Here is how the invention was defined by claim 1 of auxiliary request 3 (which was relevant for assessing the inventive step):

Claim 1 (auxiliary request 3)

A medical-information system comprising:

physical servers and data-storage facilities within a cloud-computing facility;

virtual servers and data-storage facilities implemented within the physical servers and data-storage facilities; and

computer instructions executed by the virtual servers that control the medical-information system to

receive a request message from a user device through a secure communications medium, the request message containing one or more clinical actions for a patient and a query for medical information related to the one or more clinical actions for the patient,

authenticate and authorize the request,

access a clinical-knowledge data structure stored in the virtual data-storage facilities, the clinical-knowledge data structure including clinical-action nodes, biological-element nodes, and variant nodes linked together in a data structure, each biological-element node representing genomic information, each variant node representing a genomic variant of the genomic information;

wherein each clinical-action node in the data structure includes:

a list of a plurality of biological-element nodes in the data structure;

one or more expressions or data substructures that include one or more of (i) references to one or more biological-element nodes included in the list, and (ii) routines that access genomic biological-element nodes referenced by the clinical-action node;

and medical information related to those patients for which evaluation of at least one of the one or more expressions or data substructures with respect to patient genomic data stored in one or more data-storage facilities within the cloud-computing facility indicates that the patient described by the patient genomic data has a biology characterized by the expression or data substructure, wherein the medical information comprises clinical information related to the biology characterized by the expression or data substructure;

wherein each biological-element node in the data structure includes:

references to one or more clinical-action nodes;

references to one or more variant nodes; and

one or more expressions or data substructures that include one or more references to variant nodes;

wherein each variant node in the data structure includes:

references to one or more biological-element nodes; and

information that describes a genomic variant;

wherein the references from the variant nodes to the biological element nodes and the references from the biological element nodes to the variant nodes are such that the relationship between the variant nodes and the biological element nodes in the clinical-knowledge data structure is many-to-many;

select candidate substructures from the data structure, each candidate substructure having a clinical-action-node root node representing a clinical action of the one or more clinical actions specified in the query,

evaluate each candidate substructure for relevance to the query by identifying whether a variant represented by a variant node in the candidate substructure matches a genomic variant stored in patient genomic data for the patient referenced by the query,

prepare a response message from information extracted from each clinical-action-node root node of the respective one or more relevant substructures, and

return the response message to the user device through the secure communications medium.

Is it patentable?

The examining division refused the European patent application for inter alia lack of inventive step (Article 56 EPC) over the notoriously known prior art of a distributed information system.

The outcome was not changed after the appeal. The Board of Appeal made the following reasonings regarding auxiliary request 3:

2.3 The Board agrees that a generally known distributed information system can be taken as a starting point for assessing inventive step. Such a system comprises (virtual) data facilities for storing information and (virtual) servers for receiving user queries, retrieving and returning relevant information.

Claim 1 essentially differs by the data structure, specifying the types of stored data and their relationships.

The Board agrees with the examining division that the data structure is not technical. It describes the organisation of biological data at an abstract logical level, which is in the realm of information modelling (as noted in point 2.2 of the decision under appeal). Information modelling is an intellectual activity and cannot contribute to the technical character of the invention unless it serves a technical purpose (see e.g. T 49/99 – Information modelling/INTERNATIONAL COMPUTERS, point 7). As elaborated in more detail below, the Board does not consider that the claimed data structure serves such a purpose.

First: the claimed “medical information” is broad and can contain non-technical information

2.5 Firstly, they argued that retrieving medical information relevant to a patient’s genomic variants was a technical purpose since this information objectively described a human being. The appellant cited section G-II, 3.3 of the Guidelines for Examination, according to which the processing of biological data might serve a technical purpose, such as providing a medical diagnosis or estimating a genotype.

The Board agrees that in certain cases the provision of a medical diagnosis or a genotype estimate might be regarded as a technical purpose. However, the system of claim 1 retrieves “medical information”. This broad term encompasses administrative or financial details related to health care, such as information about suitable insurance policies or the cost of medical treatments. Therefore, the Board considers that retrieving such general information does not constitute a technical purpose for the claimed data structure.

The Board furthermore notes that claim 1 only defines the data structure, i.e. the types of stored data and their relations, but not the actual content of the stored information, i.e. which medical information, expressions and variants are stored and linked. The retrieved information, however, can only be as good as the stored information. Since the latter is not part of the claim, it is impossible to say anything about the relevance or objectivity of the retrieved medical information. Technical advantages or achievements that depend on the undisclosed content of stored information cannot form the basis for assessing inventive step (see e.g. T 1153/02 – Diagnostic system/FIRST OPINION, point 3.6).

2.6 In this context, the appellant asserted that the system of claim 1 did not merely retrieve pre-stored patient data but could infer new information about patients from their genomic data and the generic information stored in the data structure.

The Board notes, however, that the novelty of retrieved information does not make this information relevant. As claim 1 does not specify the stored content, it permits linking any variants to any medical information, potentially allowing the storage and retrieval of biologically meaningless or factually erroneous information.

Second: the data stored in the claimed data structure are not functional

2.7 Secondly, the appellant argued that the data structure was characterised by functional data indexing stored information by genetic variants. It defined a particular way of storing, retrieving, and processing data which affected the system’s storage space and processing speed. The appellant referred to earlier decisions, in particular T 1351/04 (File search method/FUJITSU) and T 1159/15 (Model determination system/Accenture), in which the boards of appeal had recognised such data structures as technical.

In the Board’s view, however, the data stored in the claimed data structure are not functional as they do not comprise or otherwise reflect any technical aspects of the system. Rather, the data structure defines a conceptual model of biological information that takes into account the inherent hierarchical properties of the modelled information.

2.8 Furthermore, the Board finds that decisions T 1351/04 and T 1159/15 are not relevant to the present case:

In T 1351/04, it was held that a data structure defining a search index was technical since the information it comprised was intended to control the computer by directing it to a certain memory location (see points 7.2 and 9). The information stored in the data structure of claim 1, however, is not intended to provide such a functionality. The system does not use the patient’s variants to access and retrieve clinical-action nodes. Instead, it retrieves clinical-action nodes based on clinical actions specified in the query and only uses the patient’s variants to assess the relevance of the retrieved information.

In T 1159/15, the invention related to a hierarchical data structure storing cognitive data as well as instructions for aggregating these data from a lower to a higher level. The deciding Board held that the instructions were functional data as they defined how the system responded to a query independently of the cognitive data (point 5). The data structure in claim 1, however, does not comprise any system instructions that are independent of the stored biological information.

The Board in case T 1159/15 further held that the data structure was technical because it defined a particular way of storing, retrieving and processing data which affected the storage space and the speed of processing (point 5.1). The present Board, however, notes that any data structure or algorithm (whether technical or not) when implemented on a computer would affect the computer’s storage space and speed of processing. Therefore, in the Board’s view, de facto changes in the memory usage or the processing speed are not suitable criteria for distinguishing between technical and non-technical features (see e.g. T 1227/05 – Circuit simulation/Infineon, point 3.2.5 and T 1954/08 – Marketing simulation/SAP, point 6.2).

Summary: the claimed data structure is an abstract model of biological information

2.9 In summary, the Board judges that the data structure in claim 1 is an abstract model of biological information. It does not contribute to the technical character of the invention because it neither serves a technical purpose nor involves any technical considerations about the internal functioning of the system. The Board thus agrees with the examining division that the data structure is non-technical and forms part of the requirements specification given to the skilled person for implementation. The Board considers that the claimed implementation amounts to straightforward automation of these requirements that would have been obvious to the skilled person.

Finally, the Board concluded that claim 1 of auxiliary request 3 lacks an inventive step. All the other requests could not overcome this objection. Hence, the European patent application was finally rejected.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: T 1199/20 (Medical information service/ACTX) dated July 11, 2024, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.01.

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Maggie Huang

Maggie is a German and European patent attorney at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG. Her technical background is Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

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