Patent decision

BL number

O/068/08

Concerning rights in

GB 0419337.1

Hearing Officer

Mr R C Kennell

Decision date

5 March 2008

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

IGT

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

[2007] UKIntelP o18407, [2006] UKIntelP o21106

Summary

The application related to a new way of providing a bonus when playing a gaming machine. Applying the Aerotel test the hearing officer held that, irrespective of whether the invention was claimed as a method of operating a gaming device or as the device itself, the contribution was a way of playing a game in which an award was dependent on the correct prediction or picking by a player of a selected one of a number of component symbols, the award being based on the particular symbol and possibly also on a “modifier”, ie a multiplier whose value could be changed to reflect the player’s predictions. The hearing officer did not accept the applicant’s argument that the contribution was a new mechanism providing a new functionality analogous to the “special exchange” of Aerotel: the invention provided a new way of playing a gaming machine, not a new gaming machine. He therefore held that the invention was excluded as a method for playing a game, although not as a program for a computer, and did not see any basis on which to distinguish the cases in IGT( [2007] EWHC 0954 (refusal upheld on appeal from O/211/06) or to depart from his reasoning in an earlier decision O/184/07 on a similar argument from the applicant. Although it was not necessary to decide the point, he did not consider the contribution to be technical in nature.