The inventor awoke one morning plagued by an unbearable burden—a peculiar tedium, thick as fog, enveloped the countless players tethered to electronic gaming systems. Each one stared dully at endless repetitions, the spark of excitement fading turn after monotonous turn, trapped in cycles that promised thrills but delivered numbing predictability. The inventor knew he had to act, to banish this suffocating monotony and rekindle the joyous thrill that ought to animate every player’s eyes.
With a fevered urgency, the inventor crafted his solution—a gaming system that operated subtly, invisibly almost, performing vast numbers of game turns silently in the background. By cunningly introducing an adjustable threshold, he ensured that only those outcomes that surpassed this line would break into the visible world of the player, injecting surprise and delight precisely when monotony threatened to settle. The game’s initial visualizations were straightforward, but as the player’s time deepened, a selective vision emerged, showcasing only favorable outcomes, tailored precisely to sustain excitement.
Filled with hope, the inventor presented his meticulously structured solution to the European Patent Office, certain they would grasp the elegance and profound ingenuity. But the Patent Office examined the proposal with a cold gaze, dissecting every detail without passion or empathy. The inventor’s heart sank as he heard their verdict: the method, they declared, lacked the spark of inventive step, grounded as it was in mere psychological manipulation rather than tangible technical advancement.
Unwilling to yield, the inventor, driven by indignation and an unshakeable belief in the merit of his creation, appealed to the Board of Appeal, an austere body whose corridors whispered of hope but whose chambers echoed with stern deliberation.
In the sterile glow of the Board’s hearing, the inventor fervently argued that his creation was not merely psychological trickery, but a technical masterpiece reducing computational strain and data flow between servers and countless client devices. The background turns and threshold served not mere enjoyment but genuine technical efficiency, he insisted passionately, citing reductions in network load and enhanced scalability.
Yet the Board listened unmoved, their faces inscrutable. They dissected each of the inventor’s arguments with surgical precision. They recognized the system’s structure—servers, networks, client devices—but dismissed these as commonplace and unremarkable. They acknowledged the inventor’s intent to reduce tedium, but firmly maintained such effects belonged in the realm of human psychology, untouched by technical innovation.
In vain, the inventor cited precedents: cases where compression algorithms and structured data processing had been recognized as technically inventive. The Board, unmoved, clarified sharply: “Even if it were assumed that the distinguishing features resulted in a reduced data transfer, they could not be considered to be based on technical considerations,” they pronounced, adding coldly, “any supposed effects… would have to be considered as being merely secondary effects resulting from the implementation of a gaming scheme.”
The inventor pressed on, desperately introducing auxiliary arguments—thresholds tied explicitly to payment amounts and databases meticulously storing game results to ensure reconstructability and accountability. Yet again, the Board dismantled each defense, reducing every element to either common practice or mere rules of the game, devoid of true inventive step. “Servers with databases are notoriously known,” they intoned, methodically extinguishing the inventor’s dwindling hope.
Finally, defeated and weary, the inventor stood silent as the Board delivered its irrevocable judgment: “The appeal is dismissed.” The inventor departed through the shadowed corridors of the European Patent Office, the echoes of the Board’s decision trailing behind like ghosts.
Yet, in the gloom of this defeat, emerged a stark clarity—a practical lesson distilled from anguish. Future inventors must embed clear, demonstrable technical improvements explicitly in their inventions from inception, ensuring beyond any doubt that their creations step unmistakably out of psychological shadows and firmly into the realm of measurable technical advance. Only thus, it seemed, could they avoid the Kafkaesque maze of subjective dismissal, where the thin line between psychological effect and technical innovation spelled the difference between recognition and oblivion.
Based on T 1919/22.