Résumé de Article 056 EPC pour la décision T1439/21 du 12.11.2024

In T 1439/21 the application related to an automated elderly insurance scheme. The board emphasised that for deciding whether a feature is technical or not for assessing inventive step under the EPC, it is not relevant which person makes the contribution in real life. In real life, a person skilled in financial mathematics will have some notions of technical aspects, and the computer expert working for an insurance company will have some notions of business aspects of insurance schemes. Instead, it is relevant whether the feature provides a technical effect and thus contributes to the solution of a technical problem or not or, in other words, whether it falls into the realm of the fictitious business person or the fictitious technically skilled person. The board also noted that the use of technical terminology did not confer technical character. The terms "components", "measurement parameters" or "triggers" may sound technical. Similarly, the "dynamic monitoring" of these parameters or triggers by means of "measurement systems" conveys the impression that physical parameters are measured by technical devices. In the context of the application, however, these terms did not represent any technical features. For instance, the "risk exposure components" were, in the context of the application, insured persons. In a similar manner, the "measurement systems" were not technical measuring devices. Instead, they may simply be hospital entities reporting patient data to the insurer. Thus, the terms used in the application that in a technical context would have had a technical meaning instead had, in the insurance context of the application, a non-technical meaning. Therefore, the "technical" terminology used in the application for some aspects of the insurance scheme did not lend any technical character to the respective features in substance. Instead, it only created a misleading appearance or perception of technical character. As a result, the board could not see any interaction between the features defining the dynamic insurance scheme and the networked computer system used to automate it. However, an interaction between these features such that a technical problem is solved would have been required in order to acknowledge a contribution to technical character by non-technical features (G 1/19). It followed from the above that the networked computer system was the only technical feature of claim 1.