Patent decision

BL number

O/303/12

Concerning rights in

GB1005621.6

Hearing Officer

Dr J E Porter

Decision date

6 August 2012

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Company Limited

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977 Section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention concerns language-based interaction with a virtual pet. It involves processing natural language input from a user and then obtaining the language characteristics of either the user himself or the pet owner who owns the virtual pet to be chatted with. A response from the pet is generated in natural language, based upon the input, the language characteristics of the user or the owner of the pet to be chatted with, and stored knowledge.

The hearing officer followed the steps set out in Aerotel in order to determine whether the invention was excluded from patentability. Having rejected arguments that the contribution lay in a new system or new configuration of hardware and software, he found that the contribution lay in software which provided better user interaction with a virtual pet, by enabling a user to chat with either their own pet or someone else’s, and by generating responses to the user which reflected the language characteristics of the user or pet owner of the pet to be chatted with. Having considered the AT&T/CVON signposts, he found that this was not a contribution that was technical in nature. The application was refused.