T 2495/17 (Resizable formula bar II/MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING) of 18.9.2019

Summary of Facts and Submissions

I. The applicant (appellant) appealed against the decision of the Examining Division refusing European patent application No. 11007779.9. The application is a divisional application of European patent application No. 06111605.9.

II. The Examining Division decided that the subject-matter of the independent claims of the main request and auxiliary requests 1 to 4 lacked inventive step over the following document:

D4:|D. Kusleika: "Ugly Formulas", 23 June 2004, retrieved from http://dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2004/06/23/ugly-formulas/.|

III. In its statement of grounds of appeal, the appellant maintained its substantive requests.

IV. In a communication accompanying the summons to oral proceedings, the Board introduced the following documents:

D5:|US 6 057 837, published on 2 May 2000;|

D6:|US 6 239 799 B1, published on 29 May 2001.|

It expressed, inter alia, the preliminary opinion that the subject-matter of claim 1 of all requests lacked inventive step over document D5 in combination with the common general knowledge as evidenced by document D6.

V. In a letter dated 16 August 2019, the appellant commented on the Board's communication.

VI. Oral proceedings took place on 18 September 2019 and were attended by the appellant. At the end of the oral proceedings, the chairman pronounced the Board's decision.

VII. The appellant requested that the decision under appeal be set aside and that a patent be granted on the basis of the claims of the main request or, in the alternative, one of auxiliary requests 1 to 4.

VIII. Claim 1 of the main request reads as follows:

"A method for displaying data within a spreadsheet application, comprising:

receiving a first expand request for a formula bar such that the expanded formula bar would prevent at least one cell from being displayed in the spreadsheet; and

automatically scrolling (804) a displayed area of the spreadsheet such that the at least one cell continues to be displayed,

wherein the at least one cell comprises an active cell or cells that contain data."

IX. Claim 1 of auxiliary request 1 differs from claim 1 of the main request in that the following text has been inserted after "receiving ... in the spreadsheet;":

"determining a location of the at least one cell;

determining a range of displayed cells after the expansion of the formula bar;

comparing the location of the at least one cell to the range of the displayed cells;

determining a number of rows to scroll;"

X. Claim 1 of auxiliary request 2 differs from claim 1 of auxiliary request 1 in that the following text has been added at the end of the claim:

", and

wherein further the expanded formula bar would prevent one or more task panes comprising at least one of a menu bar and a formula bar from being displayed in the spreadsheet, the method further comprising:

moving the one or more task panes such that the one or more task panes continue to be displayed."

XI. Claim 1 of auxiliary request 3 reads as follows:

"A method for displaying data within a spreadsheet application, comprising:

receiving a first expand request for a formula bar such that the expanded formula bar would prevent an active cell from being displayed in the spreadsheet; and

automatically scrolling (804) a displayed area of the spreadsheet such that the active cell continues to be displayed,

wherein the first expand request is comprised in a series of expand requests in response to a user dragging the bottom of the formula bar, wherein each line of the display that the formula bar moves corresponds to a single expand request, and the step of automatically scrolling is performed for each expand request of the series for which the correspondingly expanded formula bar would prevent the active cell from being displayed in the spreadsheet."

XII. Claim 1 of auxiliary request 4 reads as follows:

"A method for displaying data within a spreadsheet application, comprising:

displaying (702) a formula bar comprising a text box (406) for displaying spreadsheet data;

displaying (704) a first portion of the spreadsheet data associated with an active cell in the text box (406);

receiving a first expand request for the formula bar such that the expanded formula bar would prevent the active cell from being displayed in the spreadsheet, the expanding (706) the formula bar increasing display space of the text box to display a second portion of the spreadsheet data associated with the active cell in the text box, the second portion being greater than the first portion and including the first portion; and

automatically scrolling (804) a displayed area of the spreadsheet such that the active cell continues to be displayed."

XIII. The appellant's arguments, where relevant to the decision, are discussed in detail below.

Reasons for the Decision

1. The appeal complies with the provisions referred to in Rule 101 EPC and is therefore admissible.

2. The invention

2.1 The background section of the application explains that the formula bar of a conventional spreadsheet application generally is a text box that displays the content of the currently selected ("active") cell as a single line. When editing a formula or a collection of text that does not fit in the text box, the user must continually scroll back and forth to ensure that the formula or text is entered correctly.

2.2 The invention essentially proposes a formula bar that can be expanded in response to user input to display multiple lines of text.

Main request

3. Interpretation of claim 1

3.1 The Board first notes that the application uses the term "spreadsheet" to refer both to the spreadsheet grid and to the area of a spreadsheet application's user interface that displays the visible part of the grid (see, in particular, "spreadsheet 116" in paragraph [0024] of the description and Figure 1). The same applies to claim 1, which refers, on the one hand, to cells "being displayed in the spreadsheet" and, on the other hand, to "a displayed area of the spreadsheet".

3.2 The "first expand request" of claim 1 is "such that the expanded formula bar would prevent at least one cell from being displayed in the spreadsheet". This refers to a situation as described in paragraph [0036] and depicted in Figure 4, which shows the user interface of a spreadsheet application with an expanded formula bar that partially overlaps the screen area for displaying the spreadsheet grid and thus hides the grid's top rows and column headers (visible in the unexpanded state depicted in Figure 3):

FORMULA/TABLE/GRAPHIC

3.3 According to claim 1, "a displayed area of the spreadsheet" is automatically scrolled "such that the at least one cell continues to be displayed". This feature reflects the embodiment described in paragraph [0039], which is a variation on the embodiment discussed in paragraphs [0037] and [0038]. Paragraph [0038] explains that Figure 4 shows an "intermediate stage of the expansion process", which is to be followed by an automatic "scrolling" of the spreadsheet to display the hidden top rows. The result is depicted in Figure 5:

FORMULA/TABLE/GRAPHIC

3.4 In Figure 5, the expanded formula bar no longer hides the column headers of the spreadsheet grid. It is therefore apparent that the "scrolling" of paragraph [0038] refers not just to a scrolling of the rows of the spreadsheet grid through the portion of the user interface dedicated to displaying the spreadsheet grid (which would not have moved the row of column headers) but to a shrinking of that portion to make room for the expanded formula bar, whereby the top rows of the visible spreadsheet grid continue to be displayed at the top.

3.5 In the variation described in paragraph [0039], the spreadsheet application determines, after the formula bar has been expanded, whether the active cell is still in the visible part of the spreadsheet grid. If it is not, the spreadsheet application automatically scrolls the spreadsheet grid until the active cell is displayed again.

3.6 For the purpose of this decision, the Board will interpret claim 1 in accordance with the embodiment disclosed in paragraph [0039] and will thus focus on the "wherein the at least one cell comprises an active cell" alternative.

4. Inventive step

4.1 Document D5 contains, in column 1, line 28, to column 4, line 59, with reference to Figures 1a to 1g, a description of conventional spreadsheet applications such as "EXCEL 95" and "EXCEL 97".

Figures 1a to 1g depict the graphical user interface of such a conventional spreadsheet application. The user interface includes a single-line formula bar that is displayed just above the spreadsheet grid. It is apparent from Figures 1a to 1f that the formula bar displays the content of the selected/active cell.

Hence, this prior art discloses a method for displaying data within a spreadsheet application comprising a step of displaying a formula bar comprising a text box that displays spreadsheet data and a step of displaying a first portion of the spreadsheet data in the text box.

As noted in the background section of the application, conventional spreadsheet applications have the disadvantage that long formulas cannot be displayed in full in the formula bar, which renders their editing cumbersome for the user.

4.2 The skilled person, starting from such a conventional spreadsheet application and faced with the problem of improving the editing of long formulas, would have realised that the limited screen area of the formula bar is what renders editing long formulas cumbersome and that they would be easier to edit if the formula bar extended over multiple lines. At the same time, it would have been apparent that enlarging the formula bar would leave less screen space for displaying the spreadsheet grid.

The skilled person would have been aware of "splitter bar" user-interface controls. As evidenced by the background section of document D6, splitter bars had been well known at the priority date of the application. A conventional splitter bar separates two panes of a user interface either vertically or horizontally and allows the user to control the relative proportions of the two panes by dragging the bar right-left or up-down (see D6, column 1, lines 35 to 48).

Hence, the skilled person would have provided a horizontal splitter bar between the formula bar and the spreadsheet grid to serve its normal purpose, which is to allow the user to control the size of the formula bar relative to the size of the spreadsheet grid.

The skilled person would thereby have arrived at a method in which, in response to an expand request in the form of the user dragging down the splitter bar, the formula bar expands to display a larger portion of the spreadsheet data, and the screen area available for the spreadsheet grid shrinks to make room for the formula bar.

4.3 Providing a horizontal splitter bar between the formula bar and the spreadsheet grid does not necessarily mean that the active cell continues to be displayed, i.e. remains in the (shrunken) visible part of the spreadsheet grid when the formula bar is expanded. If the active cell was near the top or near the bottom of the visible spreadsheet grid before the formula bar's expansion, it may have scrolled off the visible spreadsheet grid after the expansion.

The feature of claim 1 "automatically scrolling a displayed area of the spreadsheet such that the [active] cell continues to be displayed" ensures that the active cell remains visible. The appellant argued that keeping the active cell in the field of view improved user experience and was not suggested by the cited prior art.

4.4 Although keeping the active cell within the visible part of the spreadsheet grid may indeed tend to be convenient for the user, the Board does not consider such convenience to be a technical effect. Whether the user, after expanding the formula bar, still needs to see the active cell depends on what spreadsheet manipulations the user wishes to perform and thus on non-technical criteria.

The "automatically scrolling" feature of claim 1 therefore has the technical effect that the active cell remains visible. Looking for a way to keep the active cell visible after an expansion of the formula bar, the skilled person would have found it trivial to implement an "automatic scrolling" of the spreadsheet grid such that the active cell stays within the visible area.

4.5 In sum, the subject-matter of claim 1 lacks inventive step over a conventional spreadsheet application as shown in Figures 1a to 1g of document D5 (Article 56 EPC).

Auxiliary request 1

5. Inventive step

The features added to claim 1 of auxiliary request 1 essentially specify that the number of rows to be scrolled to ensure that the active cell remains visible is determined by comparing the location of the active cell with the range of the displayed cells. Since this determination is implicit in the "automatically scrolling" feature of claim 1 of the main request as interpreted above, the subject-matter of claim 1 of auxiliary request 1 also lacks inventive step (Article 56 EPC).

Auxiliary request 2

6. Inventive step

6.1 Compared with claim 1 of auxiliary request 1, claim 1 of auxiliary request 2 adds the following features:

- wherein further the expanded formula bar would prevent one or more task panes comprising at least one of a menu bar and a formula bar from being displayed in the spreadsheet;

- moving the one or more task panes such that the one or more task panes continue to be displayed.

6.2 The first added feature refers to the "intermediate stage of the expansion process" discussed in point 3.3 above and depicted in Figure 4. It specifies that the user interface of the spreadsheet application includes "one or more task panes comprising at least one of a menu bar and a formula bar" that, at the intermediate stage of Figure 4, "would" be hidden by the expanded formula bar. To ensure that they are not hidden but continue to be displayed, the second added feature specifies that they are "moved".

6.3 These features therefore confirm that expanding the formula bar causes the parts of the spreadsheet user interface displayed below the formula bar, including any "task panes or other menu bars or formula bars" (see paragraph [0051] of the application), to be moved downwards to make room for the expanded formula bar.

6.4 The user interface of the prior-art spreadsheet application shown in Figure 1a of document D5 does not show such task panes, menu bars or (further) formula bars below the formula bar 106. But the addition of such well-known task panes, menu bars or formula bars in an area below the formula bar is itself not inventive, and it would result in those task panes, menu bars or formula bars being moved downwards when the formula bar is expanded by means of the obvious splitter bar discussed above.

6.5 Hence, the subject-matter of claim 1 of auxiliary request 2 lacks inventive step (Article 56 EPC).

Auxiliary request 3

7. Inventive step

7.1 Compared with claim 1 of the main request, claim 1 of auxiliary request 3 is limited to the "wherein the at least one cell comprises an active cell" alternative mentioned in point 3.6 above.

It further includes features expressing that the user expands the formula bar by "dragging the bottom of the formula bar" and that "each line of the display that the formula bar moves" results in a separate expand request for which the "automatic scrolling" is performed if the active cell would otherwise disappear from the visible area of the spreadsheet grid.

7.2 The limitation to "at least one cell" being the active cell has been taken into account in the Board's interpretation of claim 1 of the main request (see point 3.6 above).

7.3 The "dragging" feature refers to the use of a horizontal splitter bar between the formula bar and the spreadsheet grid, which was found to be obvious in point 4.3 above.

7.4 It is normal user-interface behaviour for the dragging down of the splitter bar to result in a series of expand requests: as the user drags the splitter bar down, the graphical user interface is continuously updated.

The appellant argued that limiting the expand requests to one request per line of the formula bar instead of one per pixel saved computing resources. However, the Board considers that the "each line ... corresponds to a single expand request" feature reflects the non-technical decision, relating to presentation of information, to limit the height of the formula bar to a whole number of lines rather than allowing the display of fractional lines. The expected consequences in terms of resource usage of this decision cannot support an inventive step.

7.5 The subject-matter of claim 1 of auxiliary request 3 therefore lacks inventive step (Article 56 EPC).

Auxiliary request 4

8. Inventive step

8.1 Compared with claim 1 of the main request, claim 1 of auxiliary request 4 is limited to the "wherein the at least one cell comprises an active cell" alternative mentioned in point 3.6 above. It further includes features expressing that the formula bar displays a portion of the spreadsheet data associated with the active cell and that expanding the formula bar results in a larger portion of that spreadsheet data being displayed in the formula bar.

8.2 These features have been taken into account in the Board's reasoning for the main request. Thus, the subject-matter of claim 1 of auxiliary request 4 also lacks inventive step (Article 56 EPC).

Conclusion

9. Since none of the requests on file is allowable, the appeal is to be dismissed.

Order

For these reasons it is decided that:

The appeal is dismissed.