8.1.5 Identification of the skilled person in the case of computer-implemented inventions

In T 641/00 (OJ 2003, 352) the board stated that the identification of the skilled person needed careful consideration. The skilled person would be an expert in a technical field. If the technical problem concerned a computer implementation of a business, actuarial or accountancy system, they would be someone skilled in data processing, and not merely a businessman, actuary or accountant (T 172/03).

In T 531/03 the patentee submitted that the invention at issue required a combination of a technical and a non-technical inventive step, and that the skilled persons would therefore consist of a team of a "non-technical person" plus a technical person. The board rejected this approach and stated that an attempt to take into account the contribution of non-technical and technical aspects on an equal footing in the assessment of inventive step would be inconsistent with the EPC, since the presence of inventive step would, in such an approach, be attributed to features which were defined in the EPC as not being an invention.

The board in T 407/11 held that the relevant skilled person in the context of providing computer-system users with operating assistance via a user interface (e.g. error messages or warnings) was an expert in software ergonomics concerned with the user-friendliness of human-machine interfaces rather than an expert in software programming or in computer technology in the strict sense.