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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions >> International Business Machines Corporation (Patent) [2007] UKIntelP o27607 (18 September 2007)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKIntelP/2007/o27607.html
Cite as: [2007] UKIntelP o27607
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International Business Machines Corporation [2007] UKIntelP o27607 (18 September 2007)
For the whole decision click here: o27607
Patent decision
- BL number
- O/276/07
- Concerning rights in
- GB 0329930.2
- Hearing Officer
- Mr J Elbro
- Decision date
- 18 September 2007
- Person(s) or Company(s) involved
- International Business Machines Corporation
- Provisions discussed
- PA Act 1977 Section 1(2)
- Keywords
- Excluded fields (refused)
- Related Decisions
- None
Summary
The application related to a system for managing transactions in a distributed computing system. The claims were concerned with managing work done in an application, such as a legacy database, which used an environment different from the overall distributed application architecture. A transaction wrapper was used to allow all the transaction control to be handled by the distributed architecture. The hearing officer followed the four-step approach to the assessment of patentability under section 1(2) approved by the Court of Appeal in Aerotel/Macrossan [2006] EWCA Civ 1371 in determining whether the invention was excluded from patentability. He held that the contribution defined by the claims was an improved transaction management system. This system being a collection of computer programs, he held that the claims were excluded.