Patent decision

BL number

O/019/14

Concerning rights in

GB2471159

Hearing Officer

Mr A C Howard

Decision date

15 January 2014

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Manitowoc Beverage Systems Limited & Messrs. Scott

Provisions discussed

Section 72

Keywords

Inventive step, Novelty, Priority date, Revocation

Related Decisions

None

Summary

Revocation of the patent was sought on the grounds of lack of novelty and inventive step with respect to various documents and the alleged prior use of the invention before the priority date of the patent. The invention relates to a system for cooling and dispensing beverages in which the beverage is cooled en route to a dispensing font and the font is cooled to create a decorative iced effect. The key feature of the invention is the use of a single tank of sub-zero coolant to cool the beer and to ice the font, providing an improvement over the two tank, two coolant systems employed previously. The hearing officer found that the invention set out in claim 1 of the patent was novel and involved an inventive step over the prior art. On the allegation of prior use, the defendants admitted that a prototype cooler had been handed over to a third party for testing before the priority date of the patent but could not provide any documentary evidence of an obligation of confidentiality on the part of the third party. Despite this, the hearing officer concluded that the fact that the cooler had been riveted shut and security sealed, and that it remained the defendants’ property for the duration of the testing, the third party would have known that it was not at liberty to open up the apparatus to inspect its inner workings. The hearing officer concluded that the invention had not been made available to the public before the priority date of the patent. The claimant’s case for revocation failed.