Résumé de EPC2000 Art 056 pour la décision T1986/20 du 20.10.2023

In T 1986/20 the board made reference to T 2035/11 and distinguished the claimed invention from a real-time navigation system. The claimed invention concerned a system for supporting an operator in the tasks of shipping or warehousing articles, specifically by offering guidance to the designated articles. The examining division had found that the technical features of claim 1 of all requests were known from the prior art. The remaining features, such as using signs for guiding an operator and storage locations of articles as position information, were, in the division's view, not based on technical considerations and, thus, could not contribute to inventive step. The appellant argued, inter alia, that the invention solved the same technical task, albeit by different technical means, as the navigation system of T 2035/11, namely "providing real-time route-guidance information to a user in dependence on the user's real world position". The board referred to T 2035/11, which established that providing real-time route- guidance information was a technical task solely if the navigation system encompasses route-planning functionality as well as a position-determining device [...] configured to provide route-guidance information in dependence on the actual real-world position of the system. Further, this involves an interaction between the user and the navigation system, wherein the navigation system continuously measures the user's position using technical means and, on the basis of these measurements, provides the user with information aimed at enabling the user to manage the technical task of moving a vehicle to a desired destination. It is only in the context of such a system that a route-planning algorithm contributes to its technical character. The board found that the claimed system measured the operator's actual position only once, specifically at the outset of the shipping/warehousing procedure. All subsequent positions were either predetermined or at the very least derived from locations stored in a database. In the event that the operator diverged from the provided guidance, the system's ability to provide accurate real-time route guidance was compromised, given that the positional information of the preceding article became erroneous. In the board's assessment, the fundamental disparity lay in the fact that the system outlined in claim 1 of the invention did not constitute a closed loop wherein, irrespective of the user's actions, a position measurement is automatically fed back to the system for the purpose of updating route guidance information.