No broken technical chain when user input required for a method represents mere feedback of a factual situation

EPO Case Law

In T 1468/21, The Board of Appeal (The Board) concluded that

inputting a single piece of information by a user, which represents feedback on a factual, objective situation within a technical process, the feedback not requiring any mental activity of the user, i.e., the user not having to react to information presented, does not immediately lead to a “broken technical chain fallacy

Background

The Examining Division (ED) refused European patent application No. 17382543.1 for lack of inventive step under Art. 56 EPC. With the refusal, ED raised objections concerning “broken technical chain fallacy” in the claimed subject matter.

The present invention concerns a locker with an electronic lock for delivery and collection of goods. The locker comprises a keypad for entering an opening code. The opening code is updated after each use. The locker is autonomous with regard to all other structural units, i.e. it is not supposed to communicate remotely with other structural units. This is achieved by storing the same generation seed for generating the opening codes in the locker and in parallel in a remote server. A valid opening code is transmitted to the user from a remote server synchronised with the valid code of the locker prior to the locker being opened by the user. Once an opening code has been used to open the locker, the processing unit of the locker automatically generates and activates a new code in the electronic lock of the locker. In order to synchronise the remote server with the locker, the user who has opened the locker provides feedback to the remote server via an additional external terminal, indicating that the previous code has been used. In response to this feedback from the user, a new code is activated also in the remote server, using the same generation seed as the one used in the locker, so that the updated codes in the locker and the remote server are identical.

The Appeal

With the appeal, the appellant (A) stated that the ED’s objection concerning “broken technical chain fallacy” had been surprising and raised for the first time during oral proceedings before the ED. The precise reasoning behind this objection only became clear to A when reading ED’s written decision. A requested the opportunity to respond to this objection, and argued that the “broken technical chain fallacy” did not apply in the current case. A further argued that the claimed subject matter was technical, novel and not obvious in view of the cited prior art in combination with common general knowledge.

A sole request comprising an independent system claim 1 and a corresponding independent method claim 5 was maintained in the appeal proceedings. The Board identified several features differentiating the claimed subject matter from the closest prior art. The Board agreed with A that the differentiating features solve the technical problem of providing a fully autonomous locker.

The Board discussed each of the differentiating features, and found the following feature to be non-obvious when starting from the closest prior art, even if combining with the skilled person’s common general knowledge:

wherein the system is characterized in that the opening code of the server (2) is synchronized with the opening code of the locker (1), such that said code can be communicated to the users (3, 3') of the system from the server (2), by means of the one or more terminals (4, 4'), wherein after establishing the new opening code, confirmation information is configured to be sent to the server (2) by means of a terminal of the one or more terminals (4, 4') through the communication network (5), where after sending the confirmation information to the remote server (2), the remote server is configured to update its active opening code in a manner synchronized with the lock (12) of the locker (1), the remote server configured to send the active opening code through the communication network (5) to a new user (3, 3') of the system

The specific synchronisation via the user themselves using "one or more terminals (4, 4')" was considered to be inventive.

The Board agreed with the ED that the locker and the "one or more terminals (4, 4')" are not technically linked to each other, and that the user's intervention is required to inform the remote server that the locker door has been opened and/or closed. The Board however did not agree with the ED that there would be a "broken technical chain". Contrary to earlier decisions T 1670/07 and T 1741/08, there is no "broken technical chain", since the user only enters a single piece of objective information ("delivered good collected from the locker") on the "one or more terminals (4, 4')" without any subjective choice or mental activity. They simply provide an objective piece of information required to synchronise the autonomous locker with the remote server in the same way as they enter the opening code on the locker's keypad to open it.

The Board distinguished between “user’s reaction to information”, which involves mental activity, for example selection among a plurality of possibilities, on the one hand, and “simple feedback”, not involving mental activity but merely a response or feedback on an actual situation, on the other hand.

T 1670/07 concerns optimising a shopping itinerary in which the vendors visited are selected according to the customer's user profile. According to this decision, "the possible final technical effect brought about by the action of a user cannot be used to establish an overall technical effect because it is conditional on the mental activities of the user". The technical effect, if present at all, depended on the user's reaction to the itinerary. With reference to T 1741/08 a user's reaction to a piece of (nontechnical) information was considered to be a "broken technical chain fallacy".

T 1741/08 concerns a graphical user interface (GUI) designed to assist the user in making choices on the GUI. The user's reaction is not a simple confirmation of a status quo by the user to the technical system, but instead the user responds subjectively to the information provided on the GUI, and the user’s reaction involves a selection from several possibilities.

The Board confirmed that a "user's reaction to information" is more than simple "feedback" in response to an actual situation. A "user's reaction to information" involves a subjective mental act performed by the user that is clearly distinct from simple feedback. Moreover, the user will recognise the simple feedback as an essential element for correctly using a technical system, as in the present case in which the user has no choice (apart from deciding whether or not to provide the expected input).

The Board considered the possibility in the present case that the entire process would be stopped by a missing or incorrect user input. The Board found that this process interruption should not be interpreted as a possible "broken technical chain" since it is not the technical chain that is broken by subjective intervention of a user involving its reaction to information. Rather, the technical chain is merely broken by the claimed technical system being incorrectly used by the user.

The Board hence concluded that inputting a single piece of information, which represents feedback on a factual, objective situation within a technical process and which does not require any mental activity on the part of the user, does not immediately lead to a "broken technical chain fallacy".

Decision of the Board (of Appeal)

The Board concluded that the claimed subject matter involves an inventive step under Art. 56 EPC in view of document D1 and the skilled person’s common general knowledge. Since the application documents as a whole meet the requirements of the EPC a European patent can be granted.