For the whole decision click here: o36404
Summary
The application relates to an automated price correction system, implemented via the internet, in which the buyer inputs a specification for an item. The sellers of those items place bids, including overall cost and cost of the individual parts. Then one of the bids submitted by potential sellers is chosen as a standard item. The buyer is then able to change the specification of the item he has selected, and he can see the effect on the price without the seller having to be contacted directly. It reduces the need to re-contact the seller, and that reduces e-mail traffic and band-width requirements, and reduces the communication burden.
In refusing the application as a method of doing business and a computer program as such, the hearing officer decided that though storage and transmission of data may be considered technical, in the current application any technical contribution was a consequence of a new business rule being implemented. The technical implementation is driven by the new business rule. Further, actually implementing the new process was entirely straightforward.