Patent decision

BL number

O/0159/24

Concerning rights in

GB1916844.2

Hearing Officer

Mr B Buchanan

Decision date

27 February 2024

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Sunmeet Singh Jolly

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977, section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to a means for enabling users to manage group travel and events. The claimed invention uses a custom built software application that utilises mobile smartphones and their resources along with associated computer networking and internet cloud capability, to enable tasks related to account administration, users’ choices and communication, expenditure management and notification. The Hearing Officer applied the four step Aerotel/Macrossan test and identified contributions for each independent claim. These enabled access to tools and services through an application installed on each user’s device, including devices with different native architecture, and provided the advantage of saving users time and effort and optimising the devices’ capability to access and display information. The contributions were not found to provide the required technical effect and the claimed invention was found to relate solely to a method for doing business and a program for a computer as such, so the application did not meet the requirements of section 1(2)(c). The application was refused under section 18(3).

Full decision O/0159/24 278Kb