Abstract on EPC2000 Art 056 for the decision T0211/21 of 03.02.2023

In T 211/21 the board held that the decision to carry out and monitor manufacturing processes automatically rather than involving the assistance of a skilled artisan, is taken balancing different factors. It has advantages and drawbacks. Automatic systems typically afford higher production rates, increased productivity and involve less labour costs. However, it is commonly recognised that, despite the higher labour costs, human intervention has other advantages: a skilled artisan can offer experience, technical ingenuity and abilities and perform tasks that automated systems cannot yet imitate. The skilled artisan can back up an automated system and, if necessary, override a pre-programmed system setting. This leads to increased flexibility and, possibly, increased accuracy of the manufacturing and monitoring activities. Thus, there are good reasons to enable human intervention in an automatic system. Therefore, to complement automation with human intervention, providing means enabling a skilled artisan to actively intervene in an automated process for producing foods and to provide a backup to pre-programmed procedures was considered by the board to be an obvious measure. Including a user interface having two separate push-buttons to enable the skilled artisan to send a request for assistance and for triggering data transmission was also considered to be obvious by the board. User interfaces having touch buttons are commonly used in the field. Furthermore, the claimed user interface, push-buttons, control unit and remote processor performed the same functions implemented by the components of the automated systems of the aforementioned prior-art documents. Therefore, the board held that the subject- matter of claim 1 of the main request did not involve an inventive step.