Patent decision

BL number

O/114/12

Concerning rights in

GB 0910818.4

Hearing Officer

Dr L Cullen

Decision date

9 March 2012

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Jagwood Inc

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977, section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

Patent application GB 0910818.4, entitled “Process of and apparatus for notification of financial documents and the like”, concerns a payments advice system and its method of use. This system allows a payer to send a payment to a payee and associate it with a document stored on the advice system. To enable the payee to access the document, the payer provides an address in the form of a short uniform resource identifier as a reference in the payment. This allows the payee to view the reference on their bank statement and use it to access the document. Thus, the necessary documents can be associated directly with each financial transaction. A short uniform resource indicator is a means to describe how to access the relevant document and describes where it is and how to identify it, for example, a web address in the form of traditional and standard domain name address combined with a reference number. The use of such short uniform resource indicators was suggested to give the application the necessary “technical character” as a document retrieval system.

Applying the Aerotel/Macrossan test, as modified by Symbian, the hearing officer found that contribution made by the claims of the application is a means of sending a payment from a payer to a payee wherein the payment detail includes a payment amount and a reference, the reference being an internet address that can be used to access a document associated with the transaction. This contribution as a whole lies in the area of excluded matter as a method of doing business, which is matter excluded under s.1(2). The application was refused under s.18(3). The Hearing officer also found that the invention was excluded as a programme for a computer.