Patent decision

BL number

O/124/08

Concerning rights in

GB 0518994.9

Hearing Officer

Mr R C Kennell

Decision date

30 April 2008

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Adobe Systems Inc.

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application related to the addition to a first version of a stock item (such as a photograph), after retrieval from a hosting server, of identifier metadata in order to facilitate retrieval of further versions of the content for use in graphic design. Applying the Aerotel test the hearing officer considered that, since metadata were already present on the items stored on the server, the contribution did not, as the applicant alleged, lie in a realisation that that storage space on the server could be saved by adding metadata after retrieval of the first version rather than whilst it was stored on the server. The hearing officer found the contribution to be a better program for searching databases, and that any realisation that metadata could be added after retrieval was part of the program design rather than a separable technical advance upon which the program design was based. Irrespective of whether he needed to consider the point the hearing officer did not consider the contribution to be technical in nature. He therefore refused the application as relating to a computer program (but not to a business method) as such.