Patent decision

BL number

O/090/07

Concerning rights in

GB 0326489.2

Hearing Officer

Mr R C Kennell

Decision date

30 March 2007

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Whereonearth Ltd

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention obtained a likely geographical location from an internet protocol (IP) address by interrogating a database of IP address information mapped to domain level to obtain a domain name (eg an internet Directory Name Service), deriving possible website addresses from the domain name (eg by adding “www” to all or part of it), and scanning the site of each such website address for geographical address information. The hearing officer held that the invention failed the third step of the Aerotel/Macrossan [2006] EWCA Civ 1371 test because the contribution of the invention was a program for a computer if all the steps of the process were implemented by computer; but was otherwise a scheme or method for performing a mental act. In case he was wrong on that, given that there was some uncertainty in the law on the mental act exclusion, the hearing officer went on to the fourth step but did not accept that the contribution was technical in nature. Thus he did not accept the argument that the invention was analogous to GPS systems because both determined geographical location from a limited amount of available information: the invention did not determine a location by detecting or measuring anything but instead retrieved pre-existing address information from a website.