Patent decision

BL number

O/184/12

Concerning rights in

GB 0822907.2

Hearing Officer

Dr L Cullen

Decision date

2 May 2012

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Telefonakiebolaget LM Ericsson

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977, section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

This application relates to a method and arrangement for investigating an unknown calling party that has sent a communication request to a called party, in order to provide information on the relationship between the calling party and the called party. The called party can then use this information to decide whether to accept the call or not. The invention is executed on a presence server in an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network, where the presence server is adapted to provide additional relationship data.

Applying the Aerotel/Macrossan test, as modified by Symbian and the AT&T/CVON signposts, and also taking into account the Halliburton decision, the hearing officer found that the contribution of the invention relates to a computer programme executing a method in a presence server comprising receiving a relation query for the calling party from the called party, determining, for example, by searching the various contact lists on the presence server, if the called party is known and related to a third party, directly or indirectly, known and related to the called party from a group that has been defined for the called party. This contribution was found to relate only to excluded matter.

The invention was found to be a programme for a computer as such, which is matter excluded under s.1(2), and it was refused under s.18(3).