Patent decision

BL number

O/334/13

Concerning rights in

GB2432573

Hearing Officer

Mr H Jones

Decision date

15 August 2013

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Monkey Tower Limited v Ability International Limited

Provisions discussed

Section 72

Keywords

Novelty, Revocation

Related Decisions

O/047/12, O/247/11

Summary

The patent relates to a platform for allowing overhead access in an office environment and has previously been the subject of a separate claim to entitlement before the comptroller. The claimant argued that the invention is either anticipated by the earlier disclosure in a US patent or that it comprises trivial design features regarded as obvious in the light of this earlier disclosure. The US patent is concerned with an extensible ladder and scaffold construction. The patentee denied that D1 anticipates or renders obvious any of the claims of the granted patent, but submitted conditional amendments in the event that the patent was found to be invalid. The hearing officer issued a non-binding preliminary evaluation early on in proceedings in which he expressed the view that claim 1 was anticipates by the prior art. Despite the view expressed in this preliminary, the patentee maintained the validity of the granted patent.

In deciding the issue on the basis of the papers on file, the hearing officer agreed with the claimant’s argument that claim 1 of the patent was anticipated. He considered the arguments against conditional amendments and found that there was a basis for an allowable amendment. The patentee was given a period of time to submit amendments under section 75 or else the patent would be revoked. Any amendments filed would be subject to opposition. Costs were awarded to the claimant, with account taken for the patentee’s insistence on maintaining the patent in its unamended form despite the preliminary evaluation, and also the filing of evidence by the claimant which sought to broaden the pleaded case.