Patent decision

BL number
O/253/07
Concerning rights in
GB0415445.6
Hearing Officer
Mr J Rowlatt
Decision date
30 August 2007
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Countrywide Surveyors Ltd.
Provisions discussed
PA 1977 Section 1(2)(c)
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

The application relates managing survey workflow across a distributed system, the system including a requesting party connected to a network, a central office system and portable client systems, with the central office system managing the workflow of a requested survey instruction and the resulting survey performed on a portable device by an assigned user. The Hearing Officer considered the recent Court of Appeal judgment in Aerotel/Macrossan and decided that the actual contribution made by the invention fell within the exclusion a method of doing business and to a program for a computer. It was not formally necessary to consider whether the contribution was technical in nature as set out in the fourth step of the Aerotel/Macrossan test. The application was refused.

Full decision O/253/07 PDF document49Kb