Review of EPO Software Decisions in 2024

Digital Therapeutics

Two cases from Board 3.5.05, T 1741/22 (New medical data/ROCHE) and T 1733/22 (MRI/OLEA MEDICAL), held that diagnosis of illness in patients is not a technical process, but rather an intellectual exercise, citing G 1/04. The former case has more detail and discusses the distinction between the collection of data on which a diagnosis is based and the diagnosis itself. The collection of data, in particular if it can be characterised as a new “measurement”, can be technical. However, in T 1741/22, steps that did not involve any actual measurement but merely mathematical processing of previous measurements to provide “new data” were considered not to be technical. The Board here disagrees with T 2681/16 and the Guidelines for Examination section G-II, 3.3 (March 2022 and 2024 editions).

In view of its deviation from prior case law, the Board in T 1741/22 sets out its reasoning in some detail:

“In particular, the Board disagrees with the finding in T 2681/16 that providing an overall “measure” of the glucose variability and a prediction of glycemic events amounts to a technical effect. The Board is well aware of the tendency of applicants to use the word “measure(ment)” liberally in order to give inventions the veneer of technicality. This is mainly because it is generally acknowledged in the jurisprudence of the Boards of Appeal that “measurements” have technical character. Admittedly, the applicants’ use may indeed well correspond to the meaning of the word in common parlance. However, a prerequisite for a “measurement” with technical character, within the meaning of the jurisprudence of the Boards of Appeal, is an interaction with “physical reality” for the calculation of the physical state of an object, even if the measurement may be carried out indirectly, e.g. by means of measurements of another physical entity (see G 1/19, Reasons 99). In the present case and in the case underlying T 2681/16, where the “physical reality” is typically the “patient’s blood”, the interaction with the physical reality ends once blood glucose measurements are carried out, directly on the relevant physical entity “blood”, or indirectly e.g. on another bodily fluid. The provision of overall glucose variability and a prediction of glycemic events are mathematical steps or intellectual activities which take place in the absence of this interaction with the physical reality and are therefore not “measurements” in this sense. In other words, the taking of a sample on the patient is an interaction with “physical reality”. Generating new data as a consequence of this interaction may result in “measurements” of a technical nature. But generating (and displaying) further data by an evaluation or interpretation of these measurements (as done according to features (c) and (d) here) amounts to “measurements” generated merely by a cognitive or mathematical exercise that is inherently non-technical.

The Guidelines for Examination gives as an example of a way that a mathematical method may contribute to a technical effect “providing a medical diagnosis by an automated system processing physiological measurements”. However, the Board notes there is no explanation or reference to case law so states “this example is clearly erroneous.” In spite of this decision, this example has not been removed from the 2025 Guidelines.

The above decisions are perhaps not consistent with Board 3.3.08 in T 1423/22 (Renal disease/IDEXX). Here, a purely mathematical step – multiplying two measurements and comparing to standard values – was held to contribute to technical character because it results in an estimation of “glomerular filtration rate” (a measure of kidney function), which was the overall purpose of the claimed invention. The more positive outcome of T 1423/22 could be due to the clear statement that the claimed method was “for estimating glomerular filtration rate” whereas the method in T 1741/22 was for the vaguer aim of “analysing glucose monitoring data” with the output being display of “a graphical representation”.

In T 1199/20 (Medical information service/ACTX) Board 3.5.01 addressed several issues that are common in bio-informatics and digital therapeutics. As is frequently the case, the prima facie technical features of the claim were “a notorious distributed information system”. The remainder of the claim essentially related to the definition of a data structure, which the Examining Division had deemed obvious.

The Board also considered that the data structure is not technical:

“It describes the organisation of biological data at an abstract logical level, which is in the realm of information modelling []. Information modelling is an intellectual activity and cannot contribute to the technical character of the invention unless it serves a technical purpose (see e.g. T 49/99 – Information modelling/INTERNATIONAL COMPUTERS, point 7). As elaborated in more detail below, the Board does not consider that the claimed data structure serves such a purpose.

The appellant argued that retrieving medical information relevant to a patient’s genomic variants was a technical purpose since this information objectively described a human being. However, while the Board agreed that this might serve a technical purpose in some cases, the broad term “medical information” used in the claim “encompasses administrative or financial details related to health care, such as information about suitable insurance policies or the cost of medical treatments.” Furthermore, since the claim did not specify the actual content of the stored information – i.e. which medical information, expressions and variants are stored and linked – “[t]echnical advantages or achievements that depend on the undisclosed content of stored information cannot form the basis for assessing inventive step (see e.g. T 1153/02 – Diagnostic system/FIRST OPINION, point 3.6).”

The appellant further argued that “the data structure was characterised by functional data indexing stored information by genetic variants” thereby “affected the system’s storage space and processing speed.” This argument was also rejected because “the data stored in the claimed data structure are not functional as they do not comprise or otherwise reflect any technical aspects of the system. Rather, the data structure defines a conceptual model of biological information that takes into account the inherent hierarchical properties of the modelled information.”

Returning to Board 3.5.05, in T 1304/22 (Pain reduction/COGNIFISENSE) it was accepted that pain reduction, to be effected by a virtual reality system, was a technical effect and could be achieved by such a system, even if not all patients responded the same way. The invention was however considered to be obvious, even taking into account all features of the claim.

Machine Learning

The difficulties in protecting inventions in “core” machine learning are illustrated in T 1952/21 (Reinforcement learning/BOSCH). Here the invention was said to improve reinforcement learning by the introduction of some randomness by “stochastic units”. Although the invention was said to have resulted in improvements in technical systems, specifically anti-lock braking systems, it was claimed very broadly as “a machine learning system” with no indication of practical application. Although the appellant sought to argue that “the claimed approach has advantages for any technical field”, the Board held there was not “sufficient evidence, be it by theoretical considerations, or by experiments, to conclude that a technical effect is present over the full breadth of the claim.” This conclusion being based in part on the assertion that it is “well known in machine learning that no optimization algorithm is better than another one across all possible instances, or uses (a statement of this type being generally referred as a “no free lunch” theorem).”

Similarly, T 0080/23 (Model parameter combination/HUAWEI) held that a method of distributed or federated machine learning not tied to a specific technical application “encompasses a straightforward technical implementation of an abstract computation method on a conventional computer system, where the abstract computation method makes no technical contribution in the context of claim 1 and thus cannot support the presence of an inventive step within the meaning of Article 56 EPC.” Alleged advantages in performance, scalability and fault tolerance where disregarded for lack of detail of “how the nodes are technically implemented”.

Again, the same conclusion was reached in T 1998/22 (Wide and deep machine learning models/GOOGLE) because the invention did not “reflect any considerations beyond computer programming (which encompasses the design of algorithms) and mathematics.”

The need for claims involving machine learning to be quite detailed is illustrated in two cases: T 0748/19 (Camera processing data/Axis) and T 1669/21 (Wear Prediction/REFRACTORY IP) .

T 0748/19 related to using a neural network to detect events in video based on quite broadly defined “camera processing data”, e.g. compression ratios and auto focus distances, rather than the actual image data. The Board accepted that the invention could be made to work in simple cases but not in more complex cases that were nevertheless encompassed by the claim. The applicant’s argument that sufficiency should not be lost just because it cannot be made to work for “technically unreasonable” cases, was rejected. The Board commented that:

“It is the applicant who drafts the claims to define the protection it seeks. If it is clear that the claim intentionally covers certain matter, then this matter is part of the claimed invention and the fact that it cannot be carried out cannot be ignored for the assessment of whether the disclosure is sufficient. Therefore, the Board disagrees with the idea that the claims must, a priori, be construed to exclude instances which the skilled person would “not expect to work”, or which only after trial and error turn out not to work.

It would only be permissible to ignore “technically unreasonable” cases that are “contrived”, i.e. “which the skilled person would, in view of the provided teaching and of the claimed generalisation, not consider the claim to cover”. However, in this case the application did not “provide any guidance to the skilled person as to which events can or cannot be detected, and hence no guidance for the skilled person on how to distinguish a contrived case from a non-contrived one.”

The invention in T1669/21 related to prediction of wear in a vessel for molten steel in a steelworks. The broadest claim of the main request set out a laundry list of generally formulated categories of input parameters and a model that was obtained through regression, without specifying which parameters or combinations of parameters should be used to derive the model. The specification contained no training data – as would be expected – but also no detail as to how training data might be collected. Rejecting the application for lack of sufficiency, the Board commented that (paraphrasing):

• there is no fundamental evidence that a successful prediction of wear is possible.
• since the patent does not fundamentally prove success for a single specific embodiment, it cannot be deduced from the disclosure whether the most important influencing factors are covered.
• a “comprehensive solution” requires a sufficiently complete disclosure that basically corresponds to the claimed width.

Summarising, the application lacks sufficiency “because it does not disclose a concrete reproducible embodiment in which a specific selection of input variables and a concrete output variable, a specific calculation model and an indication of the training method used are disclosed, and with which it is at least made plausible that or to what extent the claimed goals (simulation of wear) can be achieved in principle.” This latter statement perhaps provides a useful guide to drafting specifications.

Technical Subject Matter

Good examples of non-technical features contributing to the technical character of an invention are related cases T 0182/20 (Malfunction prediction/HITACHI ENERGY) and T 1557/20 (Malfunction prediction/HITACHI ENERGY). The invention here included mathematical steps that enabled “the prediction of a specific malfunction (insulation defect) of a transformer, based on the measurement of well-defined parameters (temperature of the coils, vibration of the cooling fans, oil condition or temperature of the oil).” Whether those mathematical steps could contribute to an inventive step depends on whether they contribute to the solution of a technical problem. As noted by the Board:

“G 1/19 identifies two main situations in which numerical calculations/data may contribute to the technical character of the invention.

First, when they are used to provide a technical effect, and said use (“further use”) is specified in the claim, at least implicitly. This is the case when their potential use is limited to technical purposes (G 1/19, points 124, 128).

Second, when they represent an indirect measurement of the physical state or property of a specific physical entity. Even though they may involve significant computing effort, indirect measurements are still related to physical reality and thus, like direct ones, have a technical nature regardless of what use is made of the results (G 1/19, point 99; see also decision T 3226/19, points 2.5 to 2.7).”

The first situation was held not to apply because the calculated conditional probability might be used for non-technical purposes such as to assess financial loss or determine insurance premiums due to potential component downtime. However, the conditional probability was considered to be an indirect measurement of the physical state of the transformer and therefore technical. Key was that the “method involves taking a measurement of a specific physical entity at a first point in time, and inferring the state of this physical entity (i.e. its probability of failure) at another point in time” and that the output “credibly reflects reality”. The latter being “an essential factor in deciding whether the calculated numerical data can be seen as an indirect measurement. Arbitrary or speculative models and algorithms that are not grounded in reality are not capable of predicting the physical state or property of a real physical entity. Such abstract calculations could not be regarded as (indirect) measurements.”

T 0855/21 (Controlling a food bar/PICADELI) is a relatively rare occurrence of the Board disagreeing with an Examining Division’s categorisation of a feature as non-technical. The Examining Division had held that replacing a stationary barcode reader with a mobile device was non-technical because “a motivation for this modification was the administrative requirement that a staff member should be able to move the stationary bar code scanner”. Without giving detailed reasons the Board disagreed and considered the replacement to be a technical modification. Their reasons may have lain in further comments that, from an administrative point of view, the replacement could have been seen as disadvantageous.

T 0072/20 (Accessing cookies from different Internet domains/NIELSEN) held that “circumventing a browser restriction, which is itself a technical feature albeit possibly implementing a non-technical policy” is technical and “not the same as circumventing a technical problem by modifying a non-technical scheme as in T 258/03.”

T 1721/20 (Designing a geometrical three-dimensional modeled object/DASSAULT SYSTÈMES) is an example of a mathematical method that is technical because it is adapted to performance by GPUs because certain specified features “constitute simple repetitive tasks.”

Non-Technical Subject Matter

An example of an invention being not inventive because it could have been arrived at by a non-technical person is T 1637/20 (Displaying inventory instructions on electronic price labels/MariElla). Here, the idea of using electronic shelf edge labels to indicate which products should be inventoried could have been arrived at by a store manager who “is familiar with conventional electronic price labels and their use for providing and displaying product-related information, such as pricing, promotions or discounts” and therefore “would ask the technical expert in electronic (shelf) labels to supplement the price information with an indication that the products associated with the electronic price label must be inventoried.”

T 1439/21 (Elderly illness insurance scheme/SWISS RE) emphasises that it is not relevant who actually contributed a feature to an invention since “[i]n 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.” To objectively judge whether a feature is technical it is necessary to decide “whether it falls into the realm of the fictitious business person or the fictitious technically skilled person” (emphasis added). The Board also saw through the use of technical terminology in the claims:

‘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 do not represent any technical features. For instance, the “risk exposure components” are, in the context of the application, insured persons (see figure 1). In a similar manner, the “measurement systems” are not technical measuring devices… . Instead, they may simply be hospital entities reporting patient data to the insurer…’

The appellant argued, in T 0279/21 (State-transition-controlled processing of objects/SWISS RE), that statements in G 1/19 that any technical effect going beyond the implementation of the process on a computer may be considered for inventive step mean that “anything beyond a 1:1 mapping between the implementation and a step of the business method being implemented” can be considered for inventive step. However, Board 3.5.01 considered this a misinterpretation of G 1/19. According to the Board, rather than matching of features in the business method and the implementation it is necessary to determine whether the implementation claimed goes beyond a ‘“straightforward or unspecified implementation on a standard computer system”. Thus, even a 1:1 mapping might be inventive if it is not “straight-forward” (e.g. not standard programming or routine modification of the technical means used), or “unspecified” (e.g. not simply as “means for [carrying out the step]”).’

The Board also held that “looking for a mapping from implementation to a step of the business method in the reverse direction does not make sense as the steps of the non-technical activity do not have to be specified explicitly. They would include any steps that the business person would come up with in a non-technical workflow. The way this is handled is by considering the mapping of the implementation to the effect of the step and to examine whether the effect has any technical character, or whether it would be covered by what the business person would consider as part of the non-technical process.”

The level of generality at which the objective problem is defined can make a big difference to the assessment of inventive step. In T 1960/20 (Robot tracking human efficiency/LOCUS ROBOTICS), the appellant argued for a broad problem of determining a warehouse operator’s performance and that the detail of the operator’s activities that was measured was technical. The Board however disagreed, holding that:

The non-technical aspects would include more than just the general requirement to “keep an eye” on the operators. They would also include the connections to any steps in a business workflow scheme that exists in the warehouse.

Similarly, over simplification can lead to a finding of obviousness. According to the Board in T 2316/18 (Use of a second ATM to complete a transaction if the first ATM fails/NCR) the distinction over the prior art “boils down to the idea of using a second machine to complete a task if the first machine is malfunctioning.” This idea could be arrived at by “a non-technical person, in this case a user (teller) interacting with the user interface”. An alleged prejudice against the invention, the conservative nature of the financial industry, would be a non-technical prejudice and, therefore, irrelevant in the assessment of inventive step (see T 1670/07 – Shopping with mobile device/NOKIA, reasons, point 16).

Similarly to T1199/20 discussed above, in T 1124/22 (Gebäudeinformationssystem/ KAULQUAPPE) it was held that a data model is the result of a purely mental activity, which takes place independently of and before the technical implementation in a (relational) database. Therefore it, and an alleged effect of data compression which is inherent to the data model, cannot contribute to inventive step. Inventive step must be found in the technical implementation, e.g. by defining “data structures in a database-specific context or in the context of a technological implementation”, when “the technical professional, a database programmer, makes considerations of data structures, storage architecture, access efficiency, security and the like during implementation.” In this case, the data model was apparently not created with regard to the technical implementation but rather by the nature of the information to be stored: building information.

T 0686/22 (Multiplayer Game/NINTENDO) contains a useful and succinct summary of EPO case law on games:

Article 52(2)(c) with Article 52(3) EPC explicitly mentions schemes, rules and methods for playing games as being excluded from patentability as such. As explained in T 0336/07, reasons 3.3.1. “a game in the usual sense of the word is characterized by … its rules of play which govern the conduct and actions of the players during game play…[A] set of game rules thus determines how game play evolves from beginning to end in response to player actions and decisions…”. That decision went on to emphasise that such a set of rules is “normally so perceived by the players involved, and as serving the explicit purpose of playing a game”.

In dealing with “mixed” inventions, that is inventions including technical and non-technical aspects, the Board adopts the approach as set out in T 1543/06 (Gameaccount) which is based foremost on T 0641/00 (Comvik, OJ EPO 2003, 352). Thus, only those features that contribute to technical character are to be taken into account when assessing inventive step. That requirement cannot rely on excluded (non-technical) subject-matter alone, however original it may be. The mere technical implementation of something excluded cannot therefore form the basis for inventive step. Rather, it is necessary to consider in detail how that matter has been technically implemented.

In the case at hand, a restriction on the number of players based on the type of display being used was not technical because it “determines how gameplay is permitted to develop and thus lies firmly in the domain of the game designer who conceives the game.” Auxiliary requests detailing how the restriction was implemented were considered obvious but a request that introduced features relating to detachable controller (as in the Nintendo Switch™) was considered to take “a direction which may not have been hitherto foreseen by the examining division” and so the case was remitted for further examination, although it has since been refused again. Remittal here was perhaps generous of the Board; admittance of the additional request could perhaps have been refused as non-convergent.

Two contrasting cases relating to user interfaces are interesting to compare.

Board 3.5.05 in T 1042/22 (Coupling of list items/SONY) rejected the application, largely on the basis that “coupling of list items” (in the preferred embodiment during a video editing process) was a non-technical task. The Board did not accept that the invention provided an ergonomic advantage and commented that “in the absence of a tangible and credible technical effect beyond the realm of the GUI, ergonomic improvements in interaction with GUIs remain non-technical improvements in design.”

On the other hand, Board 3.5.06 in T 1644/20 (Event recognition/APPLE) considered that a hierarchical approach to recognition of user input events did have a technical effect because it added a new functionality to the user interface.

Some cases giving examples of non-technical subject matter worth a brief mention are:

• T 1255/22 (Herbeirufen eines Fortbewegungsmittels/VOLKSWAGEN AG) using a colour display to enable a car driver to recognise a passenger is not a technical difference compared to prior art that used the same method to recognise friends.
• T 2117/21 (Signed broadcast warning message/BLACKBERRY) held that the “feature that the message is a warning message is a feature related to the content of the message, not to its structural characteristics” and so not technical. Nevertheless, the case was granted due to features relating to the verification of the message.
• T 3292/19 (Dealing with malware/WEBROOT) is consistent that “vulnerabilities” of a computer system are not technical because they might include “non-compliance with a non-technical company policy” and hence informing a user of vulnerability is not giving an indication of the technical state of a machine.
• T 0780/22 (Licencing of nuclear components / Westinghouse Electric) held that “accelerating the application for license” is non-technical and rejected an analogy with accelerating a manufacturing process because “a manufacturing process, and its acceleration, is typically a technical problem, whereas an administrative task, and its acceleration, is not.”
• T 0417/20 (Asset Health Management/HITACHI) held that “asset health management”, i.e. tasks relating to monitoring and/or maintaining “the health of an asset”, is not technical because the term “asset” encompassed “assets of a non-technical nature (financial assets, intellectual property rights assets, etc.)”.
• T 0300/22 (Augmenting a simulation model/STEINBEIS INTERAGIERENDE SYSTEME) related to a method of crowd sourcing scans of objects in the real world to improve models used for training self-driving cars, which was considered to be a business method.
• T 1132/20 (Multi-tenant cloud service/MICROSOFT): a cloud-computing provider’s decision to provide functionality on an optional basis and configured in accordance with the tenants’ individual preferences (as negotiated in per-tenant policy agreements) is a non-technical business decision.
• T 2220/22 (Shape optimization/JFE STEEL): a method of designing a sheet steel structure is not technical because its output “is displayed to the user and can be used, for example, in an iterative design process, which is a non-technical, cognitive activity” and is not “directly usable for building an automotive steel-sheet vehicle structure”.
• T 2401/22 (Word salience estimation/SAP): a “word salience value” is “a non-technical mathematical parameter representing users’ interests in the content of a document.”

Inventive Step

An alleged advantage must be indicated or at least hinted at in the application to be taken into account for inventive step. In T 0708/21 (Matching foundation colours to a person’s skin tone/CHANEL) using only lightness and hue, disregarding saturation, to represent a skin tone was alleged to improve the accuracy of the colour matching. However, the application just stated that “saturation can be disregarded since it is less important” and the Board did not consider the effect of improved accuracy in the assessment of inventive step.

It is generally a bad sign if the objective technical problem is formulated as “to provide an alternative …”. T 0687/22 (Active occlusion cancellation/GN HEARING) explains that “a modification introduced solely for the sake of differentiation from the prior art simply means that, at most, the novelty requirement … is met.” To be considered non-obvious, such a modification must “yield a discernible technical effect that credibly solves a technical problem.” On this basis a change in the way something is done with no tangible change in the output is not inventive.

As part of an unsuccessful argument in support of inventive step, the appellant in T 0535/21 (Umrichter/SEW) cited Microsoft CoPilot’s answer to the question “Does a microcontroller have a higher level of security than a microprocessor or are they the same in terms of security?” The Board seemed unimpressed, noting that CoPilot itself warns “AI-generated statements […] can be false” so that any statements by AI would still have to be checked against independent sources.

Simulation

T 1594/20 (Verfahren zum Aufteilen eines Kommissionierauftrags/KNAPP) related to optimisation of the division of packages of goods to be delivered to a store between different roll cages. Several different ways to divide up the packages were calculated and one was selected, based in part on the number of journeys within the originating warehouse that would be taken to fill the roll cages. The appellant sought to argue that the method was a computer-aided simulation of a technical object but the Board did not agree. The Board held that a computational optimization does not necessarily involve a simulation of the underlying physical process but could consist of purely deterministic mathematical optimizations. They also considered the optimisation was based on commercial cost considerations not technical considerations that can contribute to an inventive step. The application was refused. A different outcome might have been achieved if the claims had included steps of picking packages in the warehouse or of transporting the goods but none of the auxiliary claims included such steps.

Sufficiency

An interesting point on sufficiency and references to standards arose in T 1290/23 (Trigger frames/ATLAS). The claim related to an access point “in a wireless network operating in compliance with IEEE Standard 802.11ax”. However, at the filing date of the patent, 802.11ax was still in draft and had many sections “to be determined”. The Board held that the gaps were “not small details that could be finalised using arbitrary choices or straightforward analogies with preceding versions. On the contrary, the skilled person would be expected to develop on one’s own an operational AP on the basis of a very early and incomplete specification. The Board considers that this endeavour cannot succeed without undue burden.” Therefore, the patent was insufficient.

T 0553/23 (Effektives Öffnen einer nächstgelegenen Tür zu einem Objekt in einem Lieferwagen/DEUTSCHE POST) is a helpful reminder that, at least in engineering fields, it is not necessary that every conceivable device covered by a claim must be fully functional. “If the person skilled in the art can deduce what works and what does not, taking into account the entire disclosure and possibly general expertise, a claimed invention is sufficiently disclosed, even if a broad interpretation includes an object that does not work (see case law of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office, 10. Edition, 2022, II.C.5.4; T 2773/18).” In the case at hand the issue was to determine the location of objects in a vehicle, which might not be possible if the objects obscured each other. However, the Board considered this would not happen in most cases and the skilled person could adapt the position of sensors as necessary without undue difficulty.

A rare example of a successful argument that an invention has a technical effect because of more efficient utilisation of computation resources is T 0576/21 (Managing pre-computed search results/AMADEUS). Here, a better estimation of the validity of cached pre-computed search results “leads to an improved trade-off between the computational resources used to re-compute/update cached search results and the actual validity of the cached search results” and “in principle represents a technical effect (cf. decisions T 117/10, Reasons 4; T 729/21, Reasons 9.4).” The appellant was also able to overcome the Board’s initial doubt that an improved result would be achieved by the addition of more detail to the claim.

Clarity and Construction

In the context of added matter, Board 3.5.07 in T 1416/22 (Screenshot linking/REWARDSTYLE) construed “device” as limited to hardware performing a function, excluding software. Specifically, ‘[i]n the Board’s view, a “screenshot capture device” of a computing device is a hardware component of the computing device that implements screenshot capture functionality, not merely screenshot capture functionality which can be (and normally will be) implemented in software.’ Since, as the Board recognised, a screenshot would normally be a software function, explicit disclosure that it is performed by some hardware device would be expected if that were the intention.

In T 1469/20 (Store tool/BREMER) a lack of clarity in relative terms such as “inexpensive”, “swift”, “wide variety” and “pleasant association” was one of many grounds of rejection, even though these related to “non-technical concepts which as such do not count for inventive step” because it “places an undue burden on the reader seeking to determine the scope of protection.”