T 0074/05 (Financial transactions/CITIGROUP GLOBAL MARKETS) 23-01-2007

The main request

1. The invention

1.1 Claim 1 is directed to a system for performing automated financial transactions. Several features in the claim are of a financial character and together constitute a foreign exchange (FX) transaction. The main steps of the transaction, as seen from a bank's point of view, are the following:

- providing to a customer a plurality of currencies to be used in the transaction,

- receiving from the customer first and second currencies chosen from the provided currencies as well as the desired characteristics of the transaction, including a desired transaction amount,

- determining the terms to be offered, including a rate of exchange between the first and second currencies,

- informing the customer of the transaction terms and receiving his acceptance within a specific time period, and

- releasing the accepted transaction terms for execution.

1.2 The remaining features specify in particular that the transaction is automated and that the system comprises a personal computer, a message router and a plurality of servers performing different tasks. The actual exchange transaction is performed by an "FX trade server". A "security server" takes care of authorizations, and a "rate server" provides the currency data.

2. The technical problem

The Board agrees with the examining division that the invention should be regarded as an automation of financial transactions using a well-known server-client architecture. The wish to be able to perform an FX transaction in a less labour-intensive way than previously possible (cf the description, p.3, l.24) is a non-technical constraint which, according to decision T 641/00 - Two identities/COMVIK (OJ EPO 2003,352), may appear in the formulation of the problem as part of the framework of the technical problem that is to be solved. The technical problem is thus, as the examining division correctly concluded, how to adapt a client-server system to make it perform the desired automated transactions. In order to solve this problem the skilled person (a computer systems engineer) would investigate what kind of client-server architecture might be suitable in the circumstances.

3. The prior art

D2 describes an apparatus for processing financial transactions (such as payments or exchange rate queries; p.1, l.1-8), in which users at remote work stations (microcomputers, p.9, l.8) are connected to a system of servers within a bank (p.5, l.15-27). The servers are organized as a "control unit" and a "delivery unit" (fig.1-3,4a), each containing a router (40,50). The delivery unit is connected to a bank database system (2) containing real-time financial data such as commodity prices and deposit rates (p.5, l.3-14). Communications from the users are routed to the appropriate server for processing. The types of server include payment servers (48,56) and transaction verifying servers (46,54). The processing is distributed between servers of the same type in the control unit and the delivery unit (p.9, l.16-23).

4. Inventive step

4.1 The skilled person, having been informed by a banker of the need to automate FX transactions, learns from D2 that suitable client-server architectures involve specialized servers. For example, in D2 a transaction verifying server is responsible for security and for ensuring that tolerance values are not exceeded (p.11, top). It was therefore obvious to assign the various tasks to be performed in a transaction to different servers. Moreover, a single server could hardly be expected always to cope with the entire processing. The particular server assignments set out in claim 1 are not described as being based on any technical considerations which might involve an inventive step, nor can the Board see that this is the case. The servers merely perform the tasks which FX transactions are known to involve. Obviously as many tasks as possible should be automated.

4.2 The appellants have argued that the configuration in D2 involves not one but two routers and not one but two central units (the control unit and the delivery unit). The Board notes that claim 1 is not restricted to exactly one router or exactly one server of each kind, so that this difference in fact does not exist. But even if it did there would be no inventive step involved in adapting the size of a server system to the expected workload.

4.3 The Board thus concludes that the system of claim 1 is a straightforward adaptation of a system for performing financial transactions involving FX transactions. Thus, it does not involve an inventive step (Article 56 EPC).

The first auxiliary request

5. Additional features

Claim 1 of the first auxiliary request differs from the main request mainly in that:

- the rate server provides a base quote for the transaction to the FX trade server,

- the FX trade server adds a spread to the base quote,

- an accepted offer is compared against a credit limit for the customer, and

- the time period during which the transaction terms are offered is within the range of 5 to 15 seconds.

6. Inventive step

6.1 The steps of adding a spread to a base quote, comparing an offer against a credit limit and offering transaction terms for a limited period are all performed for financial or security reasons. They merely add to the non-technical framework of the technical problem (cf point 2 above). The task of the systems engineer was mainly to decide which server was most suitable to perform each step. Again, the Board cannot see that the distribution of tasks as defined in claim 1 is based on inventive technical considerations.

6.2 The appellants have argued that setting the time period in which transaction terms are offered to between 5 and 15 seconds involves an inventive step. There is however no indication in the application that the determination of the length of this interval is based on technical considerations. It rather appears that since exchange rates may vary quickly it will be necessary for business reasons to impose a strict time limit on the offer. The optimal time period would thus be selected by a banker, and the systems engineer's task was again merely to implement that limit on the system.

6.3 Thus, the subject-matter of claim 1 of the first auxiliary request does not involve an inventive step either (Article 56 EPC).

The second auxiliary request

7. Additional features

Claim 1 of the second auxiliary request adds to the first auxiliary request the features that the FX trade server

- stores a time stamped copy of the base quote with a unique reference number in its database, and

- looks up and matches the accepted trade against the base quote previously stored in its data base.

8. Inventive step

As far as the time stamped copy merely serves to define a starting point for the limited time period it is a trivial feature. But the copy, together with the reference number, is also involved in the matching and verification of data. Such verification can in certain circumstances be technical. If, for example, data are transmitted over a noisy communication channel it would normally be up to the technically skilled person to devise a way to verify received data. In the present case, however, nothing in the description suggests that technical considerations have played any role for adding the means for matching an accepted trade against a base quote previously stored in the server. Thus, this feature has not been disclosed as solving a technical problem and therefore cannot contribute to an inventive step. It follows that also the system of claim 1 according to the second auxiliary request lacks an inventive step (Article 56 EPC).