Wednesday, November 21, 2018 T 1946/17 - blanket statements cannot be considered to address the arguments raised

In this appeal case, the Boards emphasized again that a decision according to the state of the file must, as any other decision, be reasoned and arguments raised must be addressed. The standard form for referring only to an earlier communication can only be used under strict conditions spelled out in the Guidelines. It is only possible to use this form of decision where the previous communication addresses all the arguments raised by the applicant. Further, it is possible by way of exception to refer to more than one communication in the standard form, but then the examiner should carefully consider the requirements of Rule 111(2) EPC. Blanket statements --such as merely stated that the "arguments were carefully considered" but "no new evidence" was provided-- cannot be considered to address the arguments raised and does not comply with the requirement of Rule 111(2) EPC that the decision be reasoned. Also, in view of contradictory statements in the communications referred to in the present standard form decision, it is not clear which of the reasons given by the Examining Division under Articles 54 and 56 EPC, if any, might form part of the reasons for the decision to refuse. Lastly, comments submitted by the applicant after the last communication and before the request for a decision according to the state of the file were ignored. 

Tuesday, October 10, 2017 T 1204/12 - Stern but fair?

The city 'Brusque' in Brazil

In this examination appeal, the invention relates to the entering and setting of an 'availability status' in a 'Push-to-talk' application in a mobile communication device, with the independent method claims defining the associated data processing. Unfortunately for the applicant-now-appellant, the Board of Appeal quickly 'strips away' the semantic meaning of the data (e.g. 'alert status') and the data processing entities ('server', 'communication device'), to conclude that the invention merely pertains to 'storing/transmitting the data on/to different computers'. Any remaining feature+effect combinations are swept off the table as 'obvious'.

The claim of the main request:

1. A method of establishing a user communications availability in an application (206) operative on a mobile communications device (200), the method comprising:

determining an alert status associated with the mobile communications device (200);

responsive to the determination of the alert status being in a first state, presenting to a user a first plurality of options, each of the first plurality of options corresponding to establishing the user communication availability in the application with a status applicable to said application (206);

responsive to the determination of the alert being in a second state, presenting to the user a second plurality of options having at least one option different from the first plurality of options, each of the second plurality of options corresponding to a user communication availability with a different status applicable to said application (206);

receiving a selection from the user of an option from said first or second plurality of options;

responsive to said selection of the option from said first or second plurality of options, auto­matically establishing and setting, at the mobile communications device, the status of the user communication availability in said application (206) in accordance with the status corresponding to the selected option; and

sending the status of the user communication availability in said application to a server (114), wherein the sending causes the server (114) to transmit an availability status representative of the status of the user communication availability in said application to at least one other mobile communications device associated with said application.