Haptic output setting with dynamic customization: technical

The invention relates to the haptic output setting on a device.  The Examining Division refused the application as it was considered non-technical. The applicant argued that the user was able to dynamically increase the importance of the alerts linked to some predefined events, thus having a technical effect.

The Board agreed with the applicant and noted that the salience of an alert clearly defined its prominence. Thus, it offered an efficient level of customization for the user, enabling them to control the salience of alerts without adversely affecting the usage of the device.

Here are the practical takeaways from the decision T 1988/21 (Haptic output setting/APPLE) November 15, 2023, of the Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.05.

Key takeaways

The invention

The invention relates to methods and apparatus to organize a plurality of haptic output variations into a cohesive semantic framework that uses various information about the alert condition and trigger, application context, and other conditions to provide a haptic output system that shares characteristics between related events.  An event class or application class provides the basis for a corresponding haptic output. Whether an alert-salience setting is on provides the basis for adding an increased salience haptic output to the standard haptic output for the alert. Haptics provide for branding of the associated application class, application, and/or context.

Is it patentable?

In the decision under appeal, the Examining Division refused the application as it considered the features over D5 (US 2011/053577 A1) to be non-technical.

The Board first identified the distinguishing features as follows:

1. Prior art

D5 was regarded as the closest prior art in oral proceedings and discloses a method for generating haptic outputs on a mobile device when communication data is received. The haptic outputs are selected from a database and are dependent on the type of communication data received. Figure 4 shows an example of such a database, wherein the haptic outputs are characterized by their time pattern, in seconds, which are dependent on the type of communication data received, e.g. “phone call”, “E-mail”, “SMS”, etc. The patterns of Figure 4 may be customised, i.e. set, by the user, as disclosed in paragraphs [0048] and [0067].

2. The events associated with alerts including haptic outputs as defined in claim 1 can be read onto the different communication types shown in Figure 4 of D5. The differences between the subject-matter of claim 1 and the disclosure of D5 are that:

– the events are divided into two types: the first type of events is affected by an alert-salience setting of the device, whereas the second type of events is not affected by this setting,

– when the alert salience setting has an “on” value, the alerts of the first type of events have an increased salience, whereas when the alert salience setting has an “off” value, the alerts of the first type of events have no increased salience.

The Board then agreed with the applicant that the features were clear and had a technical effect:

3. The board agrees with the appellant that the salience of an alert clearly defines the prominence, the importance, or the quality of being noticeable of the alert. When the alert is provided by a haptic generator as in claim 1, the salience of the alert may be expressed through the magnitude, frequency of repetition, and/or duration of the haptic output.

4. The appellant plausibly argued that the technical effect of the distinguishing features is that the user was able to dynamically increase the importance of the alerts linked to some predefined events, by switching the alert salience setting from “off” to “on”, for instance with a binary touch key as illustrated in Figure 27. Events which were regarded as important by the user were first classified in the first type so that the user could temporarily increase the salience of their associated haptic output alerts if desired. This was important for users with sensory impairments which, in some circumstances, cannot hear audible alerts or have reduced sensitivity to haptic output alerts (see paragraph [0492]). By contrast, the device of D5 stored a single haptic output pattern for each event type (see “communication type” in the table of Figure 4) so that, if the user desired to temporarily have an increased salience of the alerts for some event types, they had to re-customise the haptic outputs for these event types, i.e. they had to modify the stored table of Figure 4. Moreover, not providing an alert salience setting possibility for the second type of events in claim 1 saved device resources.

5. The board thus agrees with the appellant that the distinguishing features offer an efficient level of customisation for the user, enabling them to control the salience of alerts without adversely affecting the usage of the device. The objective technical problem can thus be defined as how to provide a more sophisticated alert system than that disclosed in D5.

The skilled person would have found no motivation in D5 to implement a binary selection by a user of an alert salience, in addition to the customised alert settings shown in Figure 4. In particular, suggesting that the skilled person might have implemented a toggle between two different stored tables, depending on the desired salience for some events, would be based on hindsight.

6. For these reasons, the board holds that the subject-matter of claim 1, and of corresponding independent claims 11 and 13, involves an inventive step over the disclosure of D5 (Article 56 EPC). Claims 2 to 10, 12 and 14 are dependent claims and, as such, also meet the requirements of Article 56 EPC.

Therefore, the Board found the subject-matter of the claim does not involve an inventive step.

More information

You can read the full decision here: T 1988/21 (Haptic output setting/APPLE) November 15, 2023, of the Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.05.

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