Friday, June 12, 2020 T 1798/13: Improving accuracy of forecasted weather data is akin to a scientific discovery, so not technical

The invention relates to a method and system for forecasting the value of a weather-based financial product using forecasted weather data. This data is derived from historical weather data for a defined time and geographical area and is processed to obtain a "quality indicator", which is indicative of the reliability of the forecasted data. The quality indicator is then used to forecast the value of the financial product. The application was refused for lack of inventive step, because in the opinion of the Examining division, no technical problem was solved.

In appeal, the applicant argued that although the use of weather data to calculate the value of a financial product had no technical character, the invention improved the reliability and predictability of weather forecast data in general, which was a technical problem.

The Board disagreed and observed that "the weather" is not a technical system, but is a physical system that can be modelled to show how it works.  In its view, this kind of modelling is considered to be a discovery or a scientific theory, which are not regarded as inventions under Art. 52(2)(a). The Board concluded that the improvement lay in the processing of data to achieve a more accurate weather forecast, i.e. an improved model using a scientific theory, which could contribute to technical character.

The appeal was dismissed. 

Friday, February 22, 2019 T 2050/07 - Distinguishing feature is mathematical but still inventive

If the entire contribution of your claim to the state of the art is contained in the mathematics can you be novel and inventive? In this case, the only relevant prior art was a 54(3) document, which did not disclose all of the mathematics but did disclose all of the rest. 

In this case the claim concerned "a method of analyzing a DNA sample that contains genetic material". The method contained technical steps such as amplifying a DNA sample, and producing a signal comprising signal peaks from each allele. However such steps where considered to be comprised in the Art. 54(3) prior art. 

The claim also contains a number of mathematical steps that result in a mathematical result: "a probability distribution of genotype likelihood or weight in the DNA sample". These were not disclosed in the prior art. 

The board muses that "The argument could be made that the distinguishing features described above are of non-technical nature as being a mathematical method or a method for performing mental activities, and that, in view of the established case law according to which features that do not contribute to the technical character of an invention and do not interact with the technical subject-matter of the claim for solving a technical problem, have to be ignored when assessing inventive step, such features should equally be ignored when assessing novelty. (...)". However, "the distinguishing features constitute a means for improving the confidence of the genotype estimate of the quantitative method analysis", and thus they "contribute to the technical character of the claimed invention".