Patent decision

BL number

O/226/06

Hearing Officer

Mr B Westerman

Decision date

10 August 2006

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Sony Electronics, Inc

Provisions discussed

TRIPS Article 27; PA 1977 Sections 1(2) and 130(7)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The applications are concerned with improvements in peer-to-peer communication between users of a communications network. In GB0423858.0, information of interest to a user is revealed by attaching information to a file representing previous users, so that a subsequent user can establish a communications session with a previous user to find related information files. In GB0423859.8, users with similar interests are identified by polling a user community to find users with common interests which each has selected by recording an identifier for the interest.

The Hearing Officer found that the TRIPS treaty is not directly effective and has not changed what is considered patentable in the UK. The advances of the two inventions were held to be confined to computer programs as such (CFPH LLC's Application [2006] RPC 5 followed) and the applications refused.

Full decision O/226/06 39Kb