Zusammenfassung von EPC2000 Art 056 für die Entscheidung T1806/20 vom 17.11.2023

In T 1806/20 the invention claimed in the main request concerned a parcel delivery system that sought to prevent damage to water-sensitive parcels by avoiding delivery to rainy destinations. A delivery vehicle is equipped with a satellite navigation system, for example within a tablet (not claimed), that is connected to a remote server. The system calculates a route for the delivery destinations of the parcels on board and acquires weather forecasts for the areas at these destinations at the estimated arrival times. Although not explicitly claimed, the application disclosed that these steps were performed by the remote server, which provided the calculated route, the weather forecasts and each parcel's water sensitivity feature to the satellite navigation system. Each parcel had an RFID tag that stored its delivery destination and a water- sensitivity feature. Although the appellant had argued that the water-sensitivity features in the RFID tags were uploaded to the server, this was neither claimed nor disclosed. Instead, the board understood, in light of the application, that the remote server stored the parcels' water-sensitivity features independently of the RFID tags and performed all processing using the internally-stored features. The navigation system guided the driver along the received route and if rain was expected at a delivery destination for a water-sensitive parcel, the navigation system provided a warning message to the driver and rescheduled the delivery of the parcel to another time during the same day or to the following day, provided that no rain was expected for that time or day. The board agreed with the examining division, that the distinguishing features implemented a non-technical logistics scheme, which the appellant did not dispute. The point of dispute was whether the rescheduling of the delivery based on the parcels' sensitivity to water and the rain forecast also formed part of this non- technical logistics scheme. The board was not convinced by the argument that information about a parcel's water-sensitivity was functional technical data in the sense of decisions T 1194/97 and T 424/03, because its loss would impair the technical operation of the system (T 1194/97). It was self-evident that if a piece, either technical or non-technical, of any invention is taken out, it would not work as designed. In the board's view, what T 1194/97 was saying was rather that the loss of functional data would make the system inoperable at the technical level. In contrast, if cognitive data was lost, the system would still work but possibly produce results that would be unintended for non-technical reasons. Thus, in T 1194/97, the loss of functional data had prevented the system from generating any television picture, whereas the loss of cognitive data only resulted in a meaningless television picture resembling snow. In the present case, the loss of water-sensitivity information would not cause the system to stop working; the vehicle would still be guided, and parcels would be delivered. However, it would result in leaving water-sensitive parcels standing in the rain - an unintended operation comparable to producing a television picture that resembles snow. The reasons why these outcomes are unintended are non- technical. In T 1194/97, it was the cognitive meaninglessness of the television picture to a human viewer; in the present case, it was the prevention of rain damage to a parcel. Hence, judged by the consequence of its loss, the water-sensitivity data was equivalent to cognitive rather than functional data. Applying the Comvik approach, once the business requirement had been given to the skilled person to implement, enhancing the server to calculate routes including multiple parcel destinations and acquiring rain forecast for those destinations would have been obvious. It would also have been obvious to store the parcels' water- sensitivity features at the server and to adapt it to reschedule parcel delivery in case of rain. The use of RFID tags to store features of parcels would also have been obvious in view of the prior art. Hence, claim 1 of the main request lacked an inventive step.