"Further technical effect"

[James Heald <j.heald@ucl.ac.uk>]

One thing I am a bit concerned about is that whatever amendments JURI
passes, the EPO may still just read them as statements about what is or
is not technical "as such", and proceed to ignore the amendments on the
basis that regardless of them the "inventions" have "further technical
effect".


According to a summary on the Iusmentis site, 

"based on EPO case law, some categories of technical activities can be
derived:

    * Processing physical data is technical. Physical data may be, for
example, data representing an image (T 208/84 [Vicom]) or data
representing parameters and control values of an industrial process (T
26/86 [Koch+Sterzel]). However, monetary values (T 953/94), business
data (T 790/92) and text (T 38/86) are not physical data.

    * Processing which effects the way in which a computer operates is
technical. For example, saving memory, increasing speed, improving
security, operating a user interface (T 236/91, T 59/93), configuring
the operating system (T 265/92), coordinating and controlling internal
data (T 6/83), or assisting in solving diagnostic problems in data
communication (T 216/89). For instance, using computers instead of
humans to process secret/private/sensitive data would increase security
or confidentiality.

    * Processing which is based on considerations of how a computer
works is technical (T 769/92 [Sohei]). Automating a known process may be
technical for example if the automated process provides surprising speed
or economy of scale benefits."
    
(http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/businessmethods/epc/)
(The analysis of Sohei may or may not be quite right).


Regardless of the decision on JURI, would it be worth trying to
introduce some new amendments at the plenary stage to try to push back
the tide on some of these ?

eg. A new recital 13a (after recital 13 that algorithms are not
technical):

"In this spirit, the following should all be considered non-technical
and non-patentable: the underlying ideas of software (or algorithms);
information processing methods; representations of information and data;
methods of interaction between human beings and computers".

(This would also nicely draw attention to the petition of the computer
science professors, from which the list was taken).

And a new recital 13b:

"The mere fact that a method may allow data processing to be carried out
more quickly, more efficiently or using less memory is not sufficient to
cause such a method to belong to a field of technology when otherwise it
would not do so".


Do people think a majority could be found for such amendments ?