This decision concerns an application that relates to the field of credit card transaction terminals suitable for use in retail and food services businesses and other establishments that interact with consumers. Since the distinguishing features were considered non-technical, the EPO refused to grant a patent. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision T 1483/19 (card transaction terminal / GOLDMINE WORLD) of February 27, 2023 of the Technical Board of Appeal 3.4.01.
Key takeaways
Providing price information is a non-technical service for informing a customer about a price (irrespective of whether this is before, during, or after a transaction).
The invention
The subject-matter of the application underlying the present decision can be summarized as follows:
The invention concerns the field of credit card transaction terminals.
More specifically, the present invention relates to point of sale terminals and transactions where the customers of a business may speak a language different from the language spoken by the merchant and the credit card transaction terminal processes transactions in more than one language and displays the correct language for the customer and the correct language for the merchant.
Fig. 1 of EP 2 183 717 A1
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Claim 1 of the main request
Is it technical?
The Appellant and the Board discussed the inventive step of the main request and the auxiliary requests. D1 which relates to a terminal for a payment transaction using a credit or debit card was seen as the closest prior art. It was mentioned that:
The terminal according to claim 1 differs from that disclosed in D1 in that it further includes a currency module configurable to select an operator currency. This module presents financial information in the merchant and customer interfaces. For the customer interface, the financial information is converted (using exchange rate information) from the merchant’s currency to the customer’s currency. The operator and customer currencies are selected from a plurality of currencies stored in the currency module. The selection can be changed on a per-transaction basis.
In a business environment such as a shop, providing pricing information in a format that is easy for the customer to understand is a service that the merchant offers for business reasons.
The effect of the currency module is that the terminal is able to provide pricing information to the operator and the customer in currency formats that can easily be understood. The skilled person, starting from D1, would be in charge of searching for technical means of providing this additional business service. This is the technical problem to be solved.
In itself, the conversion of a price between currencies is a mental act, based on arithmetic and business information. It takes the price in one currency and multiplies it by a conversion factor. Automating this by retrieving a number representing a price in one currency and a conversion factor from a memory, multiplying them, and outputting the result to make it visible, is a process which the skilled person would have implemented, because it is needed by the business requirement. Implementing this calculation as a module as a part of the terminal described in D1 would have been straightforward.
The Appellant argued that:
[…] D1 did not suggest generating customer currency information. The idea for generating currency information as part of the payment transaction process was not business-motivated because, by the time the price was displayed, the deal had already been made. A business motivation could only be attributed to the phase before the deal was closed. The invention had the effect of removing the need for an extra terminal that generates currency information.
The Board is not persuaded by the Appellant’s arguments and reasons as follow:
Under the COMVIK approach (T641/00 Two identities/COMVIK, OJ EPO 2003, 352), a non-technical requirement can be included as part of the technical problem the skilled person seeks to solve. This is so that the non-technical aspects do not contribute, whether positively or negatively, to any inventive step. It does not matter what motivation may exist for the non-technical requirement. The fact that it is not technical is enough.
In the present case, providing price information is a non-technical service for informing a customer about a price, irrespective of whether this is before, during, or after a transaction. It comes from business considerations. It does not matter, for the purposes of assessing inventive step, whether it is good business or bad. The merchant, as a business person, is providing the customer with information; the skilled person is required to implement that and would have implemented it with the existing terminal, as there would be no need for an extra technical device for converting a price to another currency.
Similar arguments apply to auxiliary request 1 to 4.
As a result, the Board came to the conclusion that claim 1 of the main request and claim 1 of auxiliary request 1 to 4 lack an inventive step. Thus, the appeal is dismissed.
More information
The decision can be found here: T 1483/19 (card transaction terminal / GOLDMINE WORLD) of February 27, 2023.