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Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Further EPA Case Law on Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions.

In a

Decision T 0643/00 dated October 16, 2003 but published only yesterday on the website of the

European Patent Office (EPO) the Board of Appeal took a decision according to which

an arrangement of menu items (or images) on a screen may be determined by technical considerations. Such considerations may aim at enabling the user to manage a technical task, such as searching and retrieving images stored in an image processing apparatus, in a more efficient or faster manner, even if an evaluation by the user on a mental level is involved. Although such evaluation per se does not fall within the meaning of "invention" pursuant to Article 52 EPC, the mere fact that mental activities are involved does not necessarily qualify subject matter as non-technical since any technical solutions in the end aim at providing tools which serve, assist or replace human activities of different kinds, including mental ones.

Canon K.K., Japan, had filed a claim directed to an image processing apparatus for the conversion of non-hierarchical image data into hierarchically encoded image data and to image processing under user control for searching an image.

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