Patent decision

BL number

O/0312/23

Concerning rights in

GB1709984.7

Hearing Officer

Mr B Buchanan

Decision date

29 March 2023

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Lingo App Ltd.

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977, section 1(1)(a), 1(1)(b), 1(2)(c), 76(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to a means for enabling a message to be sent from a user to one or more recipients, and translated into a language associated with each recipient, without the sender specifying the originating or recipient language. The message is sent along with an indication of a recipient, which is used to determine the recipient language based on a user profile. The Hearing Officer assessed and dismissed an objection to added matter in the hearing, and heard arguments relating to excluded matter and novelty. In deciding whether the claimed invention was patentable he applied the four step Aerotel/Macrossan test and considered the AT&T signposts. The alleged contribution reflected the steps of sending a message together with an indication of the intended recipients, determining a recipient language, translating the message if required and delivering it to each recipient device. It was found not to provide the required technical effect and the claimed invention was found to relate solely to a program for a computer as such, so the application did not meet the requirements of section 1(2)(c). Novelty was briefly considered but in view of the incomplete search and indefinite support for a differentiating characteristic, was not formally decided. The application was refused under section 18(3).

Full decisionO/0312/23  792Kb