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EPO: Excluded Subject Matter
EPO TBA holds regression analysis of travel times "non-technical" (posted 12/10/23)
Claim 1: A travel process prediction system predicting a travel process of a travel object traveling with transportation repeatedly operated at specific time, characterized by comprising:
a means for specifying passage time at which a travel object actually passes through each of a plurality of passage points at a departure/arrival facility of transportation;
a means for acquiring transportation specifying information specifying transportation used by the travel object;
a means for acquiring situation information indicating a situation in which the travel object uses the transportation;
a means for storing passage time at each passage point, transportation specifying information andsituation information, in an associated manner for each of a plurality of travel objects;
a means for extracting, from the means, a plurality of combinations of passage time concerning a specific passage point and other information associated with the passage time; and
a means for calculating, based on the extracted plurality of combinations, an estimate value of passage time at which a travel object passes through a specific passage point under a specific condition by conducting a regression analysis for obtaining a relationship between the passage time and said other information, or a calculation of a mean or variance of the passage time.
The EPO Technical Board of Appeals, on 9/12/23, determined that the claimed method of estimating a travel time of an object using regression analysis of historical data is lacks a technical effect and is therefore unpatentable. With respect to claim interpretation, the Board interpreted the claims broadly, stating, “The means are claimed in functional terms, lacking specific technical details.”
The Board determined that the claim “essentially covers the concept of predicting a mean time for a travel object, like a person passing through a designated point, such as an exit gate at an airport” and further, that “a travel time prediction does not yield any technical effect serving a technical purpose, and the implementation merely involves programming the statistical method on a general-purpose computer.”
The Board reasoned that:
“[f]ollowing the reasoning of T 1148/18 - Travel process prediction/THE AQUA ENTERPRISE COMPANY . . . predicting the arrival or passage time of a traveler or baggage at a specific location based on historical data does not constitute a technical activity.
“This task is performed by a person skilled in applying statistics to logistics and travel planning, rather than a technically skilled person. It encompasses tasks like parameter selection, choosing the prediction algorithm such as regression analysis or deciding on the applicable statistical tests. The latter also involves determining significance levels based on statistical distribution tables such as the chi-square distribution.
“Notably, in the present case, the selection of parameters is not driven by technical considerations, such as their measurement or any technical effects resulting from the selection. Even if this were disclosed in the description, this aspect is not reflected in the claim, which, in the broadest interpretation, merely specifies the (manual) input of passage time and other non-technical data like flight and weather information.
“The claimed means essentially outline the objective of the statistical analysis - namely collecting and storing data and using this data to perform a statistical calculation which could be as simple as calculating the mean value of a set of numbers like the passage time.
“Moreover, the claim does not define any feedback mechanism using the prediction to control the transportation system. This is, for example, different from D6 where, based on the actual location of baggage, the prediction is used to indicate an actual state of the baggage such as being late or on time.”
Internal citations omitted.