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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions >> Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (Patent) [2000] UKIntelP o25900 (31 July 2000)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKIntelP/2000/o25900.html
Cite as: [2000] UKIntelP o25900
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Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company [2000] UKIntelP o25900 (31 July 2000)
For the whole decision click here: o25900
Patent decision
- BL number
- O/259/00
- Concerning rights in
- GB 9610924.4, GB 0005604.4
- Hearing Officer
- Mr M G Wilson
- Decision date
- 31 July 2000
- Person(s) or Company(s) involved
- Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company
- Provisions discussed
- PA 1977 sections 1(2) and 76
- Keywords
- Added subject matter, Excluded fields (refused)
- Related Decisions
- None
Summary
The applications in question (a parent and a divisional application) concerned a workplace hearing protection program for developing and maintaining records relating to various aspects of noise levels and sound protection in the workplace. During prosecution, claim 1 of the divisional application had been amended to include an additional step of reducing noise levels...by the use of engineering or administrative controls. It fell to be decided at a hearing whether this amendment added matter, and whether the invention was no more than a computer program as such or method of performing a mental act, and so excluded under s.1(2) of the Act.
The hearing officer held that additional step merely stated the self-evident intended purpose of the program, and so did not materially extend the disclosure of the application beyond that filed. Nevertheless, given a lack of any further discussion in the specification about how the noise levels may be reduced, the hearing officer interpreted the additional step as being noise level reduction by purely conventional means. Therefore the invention lay wholly in the program for developing and maintaining a database of records relating to hearing protection and noise reduction, and the fact that the program generated a screen to permit a user to designate that something should be done to reduce noise levels did not provide the necessary technical effect. Furthermore, the hearing officer held that the way in which the program stored and managed information meant that the hearing protection scheme could equally be performed using pen and paper, and that it also therefore amounted to a method of performing a mental act.