Slides from my talk at the 11th Friday IP Talks organized by LES Turkey (online) on 5 November 2021

1. Patents for
the digital
future
BESTPATENT
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European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
Patentability of software
in Europe
Bastian Best
11th Friday IP Talks, LES Turkey (online)
5 November 2021

2. Patents for
the digital
future
2
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
Hi👋! I‘m Bastian Best, a European patent
attorney who helps companies make sense of
patents in the digital transformation.
(By the way, I recently founded my own patent law firm 👉 www.bestpatent.eu)

3. Patents for
the digital
future
3
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
The EPO and the Industry 4.0
Quelle: EPA-Website
Quelle: epo.org/trends-4IR

4. Quelle: Kilpatrick Townsend Website

5. Patents for
the digital
future
BESTPATENT
5
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
Patents for
software at
the EPO?

6. Patents for
the digital
future
6
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
So, what now?
Quelle: Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

7. Patents for
the digital
future
7
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
Quelle: Europäisches Patentamt
“two hurdle” approach
+ COMVIK

8. Patents for
the digital
future
BESTPATENT
8
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
First hurdle: Patent-eligibility
Photo by Marc Rafanell López on Unsplash
• A single technical feature is enough (lends technical
character to the claim as a whole)
• No comparison with the prior art
✅ „A computer-implemented method of …“

9. Patents for
the digital
future
BESTPATENT
9
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
• The claim may include a mix of technical and non-technical
features (the non-technical features may even form the
predominant part)
• Non-technical features „as such“ do not provide a technical
contribution to the state of the art à they are ignored in the
assessment of inventive step
Second hurdle: inventive step
Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash

10. Patents for
the digital
future
10
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
CONCLUSION
European patents only for the non-obvious
technical contribution.

11. Patents for
the digital
future
11
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
CONTROL QUESTION
Does the software solve a technical
problem?

12. Patents for
the digital
future
12
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
TECHNICAL NON-TECHNICAL
- Controlling a technical system or process
(self-driving cars, drones, robotics, automation)
- Image processing (face recognition, medical
analysis)
- Language processing (voice assistants, machine
translation, NPL)
- Data coding (error correction, compression)

13. Patents for
the digital
future
13
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT

14. Patents for
the digital
future
14
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT

15. Patents for
the digital
future
BESTPATENT
15
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
AI-based image classifier: technical?
EP 1 418 509 - Method using image recomposition to improve scene classification (Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC)

16. Patents for
the digital
future
BESTPATENT
16
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
AI-based image classifier: technical?

17. Is training an image classifier a technical
problem?
T 1286/09 (Image classifier/INTELLECTUAL VENTURES) of 11.6.2015
PATENT
GRANTED

18. Patents for
the digital
future
BESTPATENT
18
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
AI-based spam filter: technical?
EP 1 090 368 - A technique which utilizes a probabilistic classifier to detect „junk“ e-mail (Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC)

19. Patents for
the digital
future
BESTPATENT
19
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European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
AI-based spam filter: technical?

20. Patents for
the digital
future
20
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European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
T 0022/12 (Spam classification/MICROSOFT) of 16.11.2015
APPEAL
DISMISSED

21. Patents for
the digital
future
21
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash
Our new ML classifier is super
cool because …
Wait wait wait!
Can it classify images?
PATENT ATTORNEY
FOUNDER

22. Patents for
the digital
future
22
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
G1/19 …

23. Patents for
the digital
future
23
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
G 1/19 [88]
Die GBK “does not see a need to require a direct link with
(external) physical reality in every case.”
… but a direct link to the “real world” is „in most cases
sufficient to establish technicality“.

24. Patents for
the digital
future
24
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
TECHNICALITY IN CIIs – G 1/19 [85]

25. Patents for
the digital
future
25
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
BESTPATENT
CONCLUSION
European patents only for the non-obvious
solution of a technical problem
The EPO‘s notion of „technicality“ is quite
progressive in many software fields
However, G1/19 shows that the notion of
“technicality” is not very digital (yet)

26. Patents for
the digital
future
BESTPATENT
Brought to you by Bastian Best Patentanwalt www.bestpatent.eu
European Patent Attorney bastian@bestpatent.eu
Questions?
👉 bastian@bestpatent.eu
👉 bastianbest.de/free