The application concerns risk management for enterprises associated with sports activities, particularly involving the calculation of a sports-based financial index on which futures, options, or other derivative contracts could be traded. Both the Examining Division (ED) and the Board of Appeal (BoA) held that the claimed subject matter lacked technical character.
Here are the practical takeaways from the decision: T 0710/22 of June 26, 2025, of the Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.01.
Key takeaways
Mathematical and administrative calculations on economic and sports related data do not make an inventive technical contribution.
The invention
The application discloses systems and methods for generating sports-based financial indices (“sports risk indices”, SRI) by applying statistical models to input variables (e.g. attendance, media ratings, demographic and economic data) that reflect the economic value and risk associated with sports participants or businesses. These indices are intended to underlie derivative contracts (e.g. futures, options) which can be traded or used by enterprises to hedge or otherwise manage sports-related financial risk.
Fig.1 of EP2353137
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Claim 1 of the main request reads as follows:
Is it patentable?
The BoA applied the classic COMVIK approach and assessed the technical and non-technical features as follows:
2.3 The Board agrees with the contested decision that the technical features of claim 1 consist of a system comprising one or more processing components, one or more data-storage components, and one or more communication interfaces, the processor, data-storage, and communication interface components being configured for receiving and storing information in a database of the data storage and a user terminal providing a structured and hierarchical arrangement of successive display screens whereby a user is able to make selections.
However, the Board is not convinced that the information based on the user selections made using the terminal being a reduced selection from the full range of available information actually contributes to the technical character of the claim.
2.4 The Board agrees that the features outlined in point 16.5 of the decision were known from the closest prior art D1. …
2.5 The subject-matter of claim 1 differs from D1 in the claimed steps for deriving a sports risk index (SRI) model, which are regarded as business related administrative aspects.
The aim of claim 1 is to calculate a value (sports risk index, SRI) using a model (SRI model) derived from received data (sports variables describing economic values and/or associated risks of a sports activity and a plurality of further sports variables determining or explaining such values or risks of the sports activity). The SRI model can calculate values of the SRI of subsequently received data.
These steps, however, do not make an inventive technical contribution, since they are based on mathematical and administrative calculations on economic and sports related data. In the Board’s view, such data is not technical, since it is cognitive data, not functional data (see T 1194/97 – Data structure product/PHILIPS, OJ EPO 2000, 525). Storage, selection and processing of such data are administrative measures when creating a sports risk index (SRI) model. Additionally making use of general purpose computer functions (e.g. storing and retrieving information and sports variables in electronic form) does not create a further technical effect.
The fact that the steps of retrieving, selecting and creating are performed automatically is an obvious consequence of using a computer system.
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2.9 The Board has doubts that a simplification of calculation in the invention by sacrificing a tiny amount of accuracy in order to save time and computing power is achieved by technical means. It rather appears that the appellant has come up with a new concept for facilitating management of sports-associated economic risk, in particular of calculating an SRI index, i.e. non-technical data (see above), which is in the sphere of the non-technical business person and, hence, would be part of the requirement specification given to the technical person, the programmer, for implementation. It does not therefore involve an inventive technical contribution, since there are no details given as to how such an implementation is achieved. There are no technical hurdles which would require non-obvious programming skills.
Therefore, the BoA concluded that, in the absence of any technical contribution beyond the straight-forward computer implementation, the subject-matter of claim 1 does not involve an inventive step (Article 56 EPC).
More information
You can read the full decision here: T 0710/22 of June 26, 2025, of the Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.01.