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I partially read this response to a patent application related to assigning seats to airline passengers, such that they are "happy".

In this response, the examiner says:

the subject matter of the Smartgene application was determined to be able to be performed in one's head. Much like Appellant's claimed invention, determining a seating arrangement based on geomatic shapes can be reasonably be performed by hand or by way of a mental process.

This is relevant to me since I hear the term mental process or rule of game or the like often. The problem I'm concerned with is however very complex (i.e. computational expensive) and further it must be performed within a certain time (usually 0.3 seconds). If it can not be conducted within this time frame it is useless.

I understand that a human could handle the problem I'm facing - however not within the time frame. I fact, he might work on this his entire live...

Is something that is computational complex still a mental task/model? Is that handled differently between EU and US?

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  • Not necessarily. Afaik you would have to show that your algorithm and not the mere implementation on a computer is what makes this fast. – DonQuiKong Jun 13 '17 at 11:55
  • There is also the issue of obviousness. If you apply neural networks to solve a problem where skilled data scientists would generally do so also, it would probably be considered obvious and not patentable. The best algorithm patents are where there is a surprising result of applying the algorithm to a specific problem. – Eric Shain Jun 13 '17 at 22:28
  • I think this question is too vague to ever get a definitive answer. – Riccati Jun 15 '17 at 17:53

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