Patent decision

BL number

O/205/05

Concerning rights in

GB0020493.3

Hearing Officer

Mr A Bartlett

Decision date

20 July 2005

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Resource Partners Group Limited

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application concerns a system for managing the prescribing of medical items by a prescribing practitioner (doctor) and the dispensing of said medical item by dispensing practitioners (pharmacy). The system comprises a central database of prescription items. The doctor can select an item and generate a prescription with item data, patient data and doctor data. This prescription data is supplied to the central site and to the pharmacy. The pharmacist is then able to dispense the item or look up an alternative generic (endorsement) in the central database. Data on the item actually dispensed is then sent to the central site where it may be analysed.

The hearing officer found the application to relate to the management and administration of the prescription and dispensing of medical items and thus a business method. Further, when implemented in software, a computer program of the type potentially excluded by the Act. In assessing the three different versions of the claims, the Hearing officer failed to find a technical contribution in the network architecture comprising conventional hardware, a hard copy of the prescription having machine readable data thereon or the Snowflake (RTM) datagram. Though a novel business method it is implemented with conventional hardware and thus does not make a technical contribution to the art but is merely a new tool for administering the process.