Patent decision

BL number

O/026/05

Concerning rights in

GB0011515.4

Hearing Officer

Mr A Bartlett

Decision date

28 January 2005

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Robert Benjamin Franks

Provisions discussed

PA. 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application concerns an internet-based system for displaying on a user input terminal the cumulative cost incurred in filing trade mark application at a number of trade mark offices. The system shows the cumulative cost of the trade mark application as each decision is made with regard to the country in which the trade mark application is filed and the goods/services to which the trade mark will be associated, thereby making the user aware of the cost implication of each decision made.

In refusing the application, the hearing officer decided that the invention was excluded under section 1(2)(c) as a business method and a computer program because the invention failed to demonstrate a technical contribution. At the hearing the applicant put forward a number of arguments to demonstrate that the invention was technical, namely that a) the Office construed the expression technical too narrowly and should be extended to include business activities, b) the Office was in contravention of the TRIPS Agreement, c) that cost data was technical data and d) that the display enabled faster input of data.

Held, following the decision in Fujitsu, that the benefits provided by the invention were those to be expected from a computer (or network of computers) and therefore, as the hardware was conventional and the computer was not operating in a different way at a technical level, and the invention was the computerisation of what had previously been done manually, no technical contribution could be identified.