Improving A Mobile POS Terminal In Respect Of The Customers' Security Against Fraudulent Use Of Their Sensitive Information: Technical

This decision is interesting in that it uses the concept of the "notional business person", as it was introduced in T 1463/11, to assess whether a given difference over the prior art achieves a technical effect or not.

Here are the practical takeaways from the decision T 1749/14 (MOBILE PERSONAL POINT-OF-SALE TERMINAL/MAXIM) of 3.4.2020 of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.01:

Key takeaways

Improving a mobile POS terminal in respect of the customers' security against fraudulent use of their sensitive information: technical

The invention

This European patent application concerns the field of mobile point-of-sale (POS) terminals for carrying out credit card transactions.

Conventionally, the merchant possesses such mobile POS terminals and the customer has to provide identification credentials (e.g. an account number and PIN) to this merchant's unit. The invention tries to avoid the customer's sensitive information becoming known if the merchant's device is