Patent decision

BL number

O/082/07

Concerning rights in

GB 0320232.2

Hearing Officer

Mr R C Kennell

Decision date

22 March 2007

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Cantor Index LLC

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Sections 1(1), 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused), Inventive step

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention related to a betting system in which a win bet (that a single participant would win) was combined with a group bet (that one of a subset of participants would win). The hearing officer did not think that determining the contribution of the invention for the purposes of the test in Aerotel/Macrossan [2006] EWCA Civ 1371 necessarily required a consideration of novelty and inventive step. He held the contribution, as a matter of substance, to be the provision of a group bet, its incorporation into a betting system and calculation of payouts in dependence on it, and did not accept the applicant’s argument that the contribution extended to the processor functions which formed part of the claims because the advantage of reduced traffic in the system would not otherwise be realised. The hearing officer held the invention to be excluded under the third step of the test as a computer program (stripping out the hardware aspects which were conventional) and a method for doing business; even if this finding was incorrect he did not think the contribution was technical.

The application was therefore refused, although the hearing officer also held that the invention involved an inventive step over the prior art cited by the examiner. Although the nearest document disclosed something that might be a group bet, it did not disclose or point to the placing of a group bet as a single transaction in conjunction with a win bet.