Category: G06N

Configuring a system-of-systems with membrane computing/SIEMENS – T 1565/ 17 – 9 January 2018

In this decision the appellant argued inter alia, that it is not possible to prove the expected technical effect and that this obliged the board to accept the effect unless it could “falsify” it.

Object of the Invention:

  • the application relates to what is called the “configuration of a system-of-systems“
  • the term “system-of-systems” is said to have arisen in the systems engineering community, where it “reflects the concepts and developments” of real systems such as “smart grids, integrated supply chains, collaborative enterprises, and next-generation air traffic management“
  • a system-of-systems is “a collection of independent systems that work together to create a new, more complex system which offers more functionality and performance than simply the sum of the constituent systems“
  • configuration of a system-of-systems is said to be “the task of selecting the optimal subset of component systems, that can perform the required task“
  • the problem/task is rephrased in mathematical terms as a selection problem
  • the relevant “characteristics” C of any system-of-systems SoS are defined as a set of pairs of attributes A and values from a set Domain(A) of all values which the respective attributes can take: Hence, the set of all possible such characteristics is C(SoS) = union of all attribute-value pairs Ai x Domain(Ai)
  • the available components for any particular system are given as a set S of components Si, each having some characteristics: Thus C(Si) is a subset of C(SoS) for any Si
  • the required characteristics are given as a subset of all possible ones too: C(R) is a subset of C(SoS)
  • the configuration problem is then said to be the problem of finding an “optimal” subset Simpuls of the available components S so that their characteristics include the required ones: C(R) must be a subset of C(Simpuls)
  • the notion of optimality is not defined in the application
  • the declared objective of the invention is to solve this “system-of-systems configuration problem” with “membrane computing“, which is disclosed as being “a variation of” P-systems, a computational model “inspired” by biological processes
  • the invention is said to rely on “a new kind of solver” which is “constructed using membranes, also called P-systems, and uses metaphors of chemical reactions occurring in living cells”

Appellant I (issue to be decided)

  • use of “membrane computing” is the only difference over D1
  • this difference has the effect of making it “possible to solve the occurring NP-hard problems […] in linear time”
  • the objective technical problem solved by the invention thus has to be seen as “improv[ing] the time behavior of a method for the configuration of a system-of-systems“
  • the claimed invention involves an inventive step because “there is no teaching in the prior art that would have prompted the skilled person, faced with the objective technical problem, to modify” D1 “by means of membrane computing“
  • a “skilled person, confronted with the invention and with the information about” D2 “would accept” that by using “membrane computing” the “occurring NP-hard problems in the method” for the configuration of a complex system-of systems “can be solved in linear time“
  • D2 “is conclusive proof” of “the claimed technical effect“
  • “it is principally not possible for the applicant to prove the expected technical effect“, suggesting that the invention was “a theory in the empirical sciences“, which, according to Sir Karl Popper, “can only be falsified“
  • this obliged the board to accept the effect unless it could “falsify” it

Board I (clarity)

  • Claim 1 refers to “configuration of a system-of-systems without defining either “system-of-systems” or the problem of “configur[ing]” one, apart from mentioning that a “components system” has “roles described by […] participation statements” and “a set of requirements” which a configuration has to “fulfill”
  • both terms are unclear
  • there is no indication in the application that the term “system-of-systems“, or the problem of configuring one, has an established clear meaning in the art
  • the application itself uses these terms in two significantly different ways […]
  • D1 stresses further differing aspects of a “system-of-systems“, namely that the system components are related to each other by “use” relationships
  • Claim 1 states that the configuration of the system-of-systems is computed “by means of membrane computing“
  • the term “membrane computing“, and the notion of computing something “by means of” membrane computing, to be unclear in this generality […]
  • in response to the board’s objections relating to clarity, the appellant has merely asserted that the claims are “clear enough” for the relevant skilled person
  • this sweeping asserting does not sway the board’s opinion
  • in this respect it is only of passing relevance that the skilled person is insufficiently characterised as having an unspecified “academic” education and “scientific work experience”
  • claim 1 does not specify in clear terms the problem addressed (“configuration of a system-of-systems”) or the solution proposed (at least with regard to the phrase “by means of membrane computing”) and is thus unclear

Board II (further remarks)

  • since claim 1 does not specify the problem to be solved or its solution, it is impossible to determine the complexity class of the problem or the computational complexity of the solution
  • for this reason alone, the appellant’s allegation that the claimed invention solved “the occurring NP-hard problems […] in linear time” is without merit
  • the board notes at this point that computational complexity theory is not, as the appellant seems to suggest, an empirical theory which is not amenable to proof
  • to the contrary, complexity theorems are established by mathematical proof and their limits are precisely indicated
  • therefore, if the appellant’s inventive step argument turns on an improved time behaviour, a rather specific one in particular, it is for the appellant to establish that the proposed solution has the claimed time complexity, and in which situations or under which circumstances it applies

Expert system/SCHINDLER – T 1817/ 14 – 4 July 2017

This decision concerns information modelling by a user to create a data structure, where this modelling has no technical effect. Therefore, the modelling steps are considered as an aim to be achieved in a non-technical field and used for the formulation of the technical problem (COMVIK II). The data structure created by the user also has no technical advantage for a claimed subsequent query processing.

Object of the Invention:

  • expert system for aiding patent administration and jurisprudence by providing (semi)automated support for assessing a patent or patent application (or other “endeavour”) for novelty and inventive step in view of “a national patent system or its Highest court precedents”
  • the invention proposes to obtain from a patent (or patent application) p and any prior art document i elements of their respective technical teachings TT.p and TT.i
  • the TT.i’s of the prior-art document i are collectively referred to as “RS” (reference set) and, in combination with the TT.p’s, as “PTR” (pair of TT.p and RS)
  • the elements and their “relations”, expressing anticipation and contradiction between elements or sets of elements, are arranged in what is called an ANC matrix (“anticipates/non-ants/contradicts”)
  • the information in this matrix can be queried by and is then displayed to the user

Board I (claim construction)

  • the claimed method has two phases: the first phase leads to the creation of the ANC matrix which, in the second phase is used to “automatically and instantly” produce responses to user queries
  • the major part of the first phase is done by the user
  • only the processing of user queries is meant to be automated

Board II (technical effects and inventive step)

  • the major part of claim 1 is a modelling procedure during which the user considers the items in the domain of interest, extracts their relevant properties, and “compiles” them “into” a formal language
  • following T 49/99, this procedure of information modelling to be an intellectual activity
  • (effectively a method for performing mental acts, Article 52(2)(c) EPC) which does not, per se, contribute to the technical character of an invention
  • for this conclusion it is immaterial that the present application does not even relate to the modelling (let alone simulation) of a physical system but to the modelling of what a given set of documents discloses and how they relate to each other
  • accordingly, a technical contribution of the present invention could only lie in the way in which the generation and use of the model are implemented

Appellant I (technical effects and inventive step)

  • particular features of the ANC data structure had to be considered to be technical
  • in particular that the ANC had to reflect the analysis of documents in terms of two different levels of granularity (“elements” and “fundamental facts of these elements”) and that it contained novel fields (e.g. “anticipates/not-anticipates-and-not-contradicts/contradicts” as claimed)

Board III (technical effects and inventive step)

  • the appellant did not argue that the particular ANC data structure had a specific technical advantage for the subsequent query processing
  • the appellant was thus unable to convince the board that the modelling steps caused any technical effect
  • when, however, the modelling steps are assumed to be taken as an aim to be achieved in a non-technical field – according to established jurisprudence of the boards of appeal (see T 641/00, headnote 2) – the form of the ANC is determined by the model and thus obvious
  • the computer support specified in claim 1 does not go beyond the general statement that a computer is used to support the users in their task
  • likewise, the feature that users may query the “items” in the ANC and the method replies “automatically and instantly by displaying to the user this item’s information and all its such relations to other items” does not, in the board’s judgement, go beyond the statement that the information in the ANC may be accessed by user queries, as is known from prior-art database systems
  • –> claim 1 lacks inventive step in view of common knowledge, as an obvious way of providing computer support to an essentially non-technical method

 

 

Concept terms scoring/GOOGLE – T 0872/19 – 14 October 2021

In this decision, the appellant stated that a “web page” is a physical entity, corresponding to an “image”. The Board has considerable doubts about this. In fact, the inventive step did not depend on this.

Object of the Invention:

  • the subject matter relates to online advertisement auctions
  • when an online advertisement auction is to be conducted to select one or more advertisements to be included in a resource/ web page, resource features are extracted from the web page
  • a concept term scoring system uses the received resource features to predict a vector of scores that includes a score for each of the set of concept terms/ advertising features
  • in online advertising, the concept term scoring system can generate a score for each of a set of concept terms that may be used as advertising keywords for selecting advertisements for participation in the auction
  • the concept term scoring system includes a deep network and a classifier
  • Claim 1 differs from the closest prior art inter alia in that it is configured to process the alternative representation of the input to generate a respective relevance score for each concept term in a pre-determined set of concept terms, wherein each of the respective relevance scores measures a predicted relevance of the corresponding concept term to the resource

Appellant I (inventive step – 3rd auxiliary request)

  • the objective problem to be solved was to provide a more accurate representation of the resource features by generating an alternative representation of these resource features “in a new way”
  • in decision T 208/84, point 3, the board found that a method for image processing was susceptible of industrial application
  • T 208/84 stated the following: “Clearly a method for obtaining and/or reproducing an image of a physical object or even an image of a simulated object (as in computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems) may be used e.g. in investigating properties of the object or designing an industrial article and is therefore susceptible of industrial application. Similarly, a method for enhancing or restoring such an image, without adding to its informational content, had to be considered as susceptible of industrial application.“
  • in T 208/84, points 6 and 7, the board stated that it was of the opinion that “even if the idea underlying an invention may be considered to reside in a mathematical method a claim directed to a technical process in which the method is used does not seek protection for the mathematical method as such” and concluded that “[i]n contrast, a ‘method for digitally filtering data’ remains an abstract notion not distinguished from a mathematical method so long as it is not specified what physical entity is represented by the data and forms the subject of a technical process, i.e. a process which is susceptible of industrial application“
  • thus, the board equated a “technical process” with “a process susceptible of industrial application“
  • in accordance with the case law, “processing images” was considered as being susceptible of industrial application and thus was technical
  • according to the appellant a “web page” is a “physical entity”

Board I (inventive step – 3rd auxiliary request)

  • the board agrees that the electrical signals producing the “web page” are physical entities and that a web page printed on a piece of paper becomes physical
  • but it has strong doubts that a “web page” can be considered as a “physical entity“
  • rather, a “web page” is data representing information

Appellant II (inventive step – 3rd auxiliary request)

  • it would thus be correct to consider processing other entities, such as text, to be technical as well
  • the appellant questioned the difference between processing images versus processing text: the words in a particular language had a meaning (except for nonsensical words or sounds) that a (sufficient) number of people understood in the same manner as a (sufficient) number of people recognised a particular colour as being “red”, for example, even though this understanding was not “universal”
  • both an image and a web page were physical entities and that the claimed system concerned the processing, i.e. the analysing and classification, of physical entities
  • the classification of images had been recognised in the case law as solving a technical problem

Board II (inventive step – 3rd auxiliary request)

  • the board did not consider whether the system of claim 1 might be susceptible of industrial application but indeed whether the system had a technical effect going beyond the mere implementation of a non-technical method on one or more computers
  • however, providing a more accurate “alternative representation” of the resource features, and therefore refined relevance scores, is not a technical effect since the relevance scores do not constitute technical features
  • this does not depend on whether the “resources” are text, web pages, images or multimedia content, as in page 1, lines 4 to 5, of the description, and thus does not depend on whether the “resource features” are features of text, web pages, images or multimedia content (G 1/19 of 10 March 2021, Reasons 126, last sentence; see also T 1924/17 of 29 July 2019, Reasons 12 to 13).

Board III (inventive step – 3rd auxiliary request)

  • the relevance scores measure a predicted relevance of the “concept terms” to the resource
  • taking the example of an “image” as a “resource”, the concept term might be “cat“
  • the (first) relevance of this “concept term” to a first image comprising only dogs might be lower than its (second) relevance to a second image comprising exactly one dog and one cat, which might itself be lower than its (third) relevance to a third image comprising two cats or more, as an example
  • inversely, the three images exemplified here might be classified by their relevance to the concept term “cat”: the third image is more relevant than the second image, which is itself more relevant than the first image
  • the system of claim 1 does not explicitly stipulate that the classifier is also “configured to classify the concept terms” or “configured to classify the resources”
  • on the contrary, the description on page 6, lines 10 to 13 discloses that it is the concept term scoring system and not the classifier that orders the concept terms based on the alternative representation
  • moreover, not all image classifications solve a technical problem
  • if a user classifies displayed images via a user interface to have the images arranged according to the user’s viewing preferences, the image classification will, in most cases, not solve a technical problem
  • in the absence of any technical effect beyond its mere implementation in one or more computers, the subject matter of claim 1 of the first to third auxiliary requests cannot be considered to involve an inventive step