Patent decision

BL number

O/359/04

Concerning rights in

GB 0218619.5

Hearing Officer

Mr D Jerreat

Decision date

6 December 2004

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Dean Gerrard Anthony Maroun

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application concerned a gaming apparatus and method, in particular a computer-based horse racing game. Data processing apparatus was used to receive racing object race performance influencing data over a computer network from a number of owners and the data stored in a memory which also stored the racing objects, each of which had inherent attributes. A computing device used the inherent attributes of the racing objects and the data to carry out a race simulation to compute a race outcome. The data was securely and confidentially stored so that each owner could access their own data but could not access the data of other owners.

It was argued that the correct approach was to consider whether the claimed subject matter could be considered to provide a technical contribution and if so then consider whether the claimed invention was novel, inventive and capable of industrial application. It was submitted that 'technical contribution' should be interpreted as meaning 'a contribution in a technical field'. In the case of the application it was the field of memory management, control and processing.

The Hearing Officer considered that the claimed invention related to no more than the computer-implementation of a game and a method of doing business, viz. business activities associated with the horse racing industry. He maintained that there was no detail about how the storage means was arranged or configured to provide an identifiable technical contribution. The fact that it was acknowledged that a computer scientist was able to use his routine computer programming skills to meet the requirements of the invention implied that the contribution was merely a computer program and most probably a routine one at that. He concluded that it failed to provide a technical contribution which would prevent it being excluded from patentability.