Patent decision

BL number

O/272/12

Concerning rights in

GB0813303.5

Hearing Officer

Mr G J Rose'Meyer

Decision date

12 July 2012

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Mr Nicholas Paul Robinson

Provisions discussed

PA Act 1977 Section 20(A)

Keywords

Reinstatement

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application was filed on 21 July 2008 and proceeded normally until 8 February 2011. Then the Office sent the applicant a reminder that if he wished to continue with the application, the request for a substantive examination should be filed on a Patents Form 10 with the prescribed fee, on or before 25 February 2011, unless a request to extend that time by two months was made at additional cost.

The Form 10 was not filed by the due date or by the extended period. The next contact the applicant had with the Office was on 1 July 2011 when he rang and spoke to an official enquiring about the status of his application. He was informed that the application had lapsed due to the non-filing of the Patents Form 10 and its fee, but that it may still be possible to reinstate the application. On 5 July 2011 the applicant requested reinstatement of the application. After examination of evidence filed by the applicant, the Office wrote to him explaining that the case for reinstatement had not been made out because the failure to file the Form 10 on time was not “unintentional” as required by s. 20(A) of the Act. The applicant subsequently requested a decision from the papers filed on this case.

The evidence of file showed that the applicant was involved in a number of dealings with the invention the subject of this application trying to secure development funding and with potential interested parties. These dealings had not always gone smoothly and had led the applicant to become preoccupied with this work and indeed other work relating to other patent applications and other commercial activities. The evidence showed that although the applicant had received reminders from the Office about filing the Form 10, he had not kept records of these and eventually the outside pressures had caused him to overlook the deadline for doing so.

The HO found that the application for reinstatement had been filed within the time required by rule 32(2)(a) and went on to find that the applicant’s preoccupation with all the surrounding circumstances to this invention and other patent matters and his other working commitments ultimately led to him inadvertently overlook the deadline for filing the Form 10 and fee. As such he found the applicant’s failure not to file the Form 10 on time was not a conscious one and was therefore unintentional. He went on to order reinstatement of the application.