Patent decision

BL number

O/204/11

Concerning rights in

GB 0822566.6

Hearing Officer

Mr A Bartlett

Decision date

10 June 2011

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Theresia Marlys Benker

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977 section 1(1)(b) 1(2)(d)

Keywords

Inventive step

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention relates to a measuring container eg a wine glass for alcoholic drinks. For each of a plurality of different strength drinks, the container indicates the number of standard units of alcohol in the drink when filled to a particular level rather than the volume of liquid.

The hearing officer applied the steps of the Windsurfing test, as reformulated in Pozzoli, and found that the claimed invention lacked an inventive step over the cited prior art and refused the application. The prior art showed that it was known at the priority date for vessels to be provided with a scale calibrated in standard units of alcohol and separately to provide multiple scales to allow a container to indicate alcohol content for drinks of different strengths. The hearing officer concluded that there was no inventive step involved in replacing one unit of alcohol content with another in the devices having scales for multiple drinks or in including multiple scales in the device which indicated alcohol content in the particular unit claimed.

Having found the invention to lack an inventive step, the hearing officer did not consider it necessary to decide the presentation of information point.