EPO patent on introducing customers to lawyers

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

At

        http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/ep/1249/000/

you find a patent application with the following main claim in many
variations

   A computer-implemented method for procuring legal services,
   comprising: receiving a service request including information
   reflecting a type of legal service; determining from a set of
   service providers a select group of service providers capable of
   satisfying the service request based on stored information
   associated with the set of service providers, the stored
   information including at least an identification of types of legal
   services associated with each service provider; providing the
   service request to each service provider of the select group of
   service providers; receiving a response to the service request from
   any service providers from the select group; and outputting to the
   requester any responses from the service providers.

These claims were published in 2001/07.  They still seem to be in the
examination backlog.

This is probably invalid even according to EPO standards, and if it
isn't, the lawyers at the EPO will make sure it is.  After all they
know how bad patents are for their business and they won't do unto
themselves what they do unto others.

But it does seem somewhat strange that this patent application
appeared on the EPO site at all.  After all in August 2001, shortly
after this one was published, the EPO issued a press release saying
that it will reject business method patents and not even perform a
search for them, see

        http://www.epo.co.at/news/pressrel/2001_08_13_e.htm
        http://swpat.ffii.org/news/epon023/

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608   
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
135,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/