Patent decision

BL number

O/0189/24

Concerning rights in

GB2118756.2

Hearing Officer

Dr L Cullen

Decision date

6 March 2024

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Nextiva, Inc.

Provisions discussed

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

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

This invention concerns the organisation of chat-based communication systems which enable the establishment of private chat threads, or conversations, between a range of devices, such as computers, tablets and smart phones.

The Hearing Officer (HO), taking account of the cited prior art, applied the four-step test from Aerotel/Macrossan and considered the modified signposts from HTC v Apple. The HO found that the actual contribution of the invention did not lie in the identification and tracking features providing improved security in text- or image-based chat-spaces but rather in setting up and allowing private communications (threads) within the public chat-space and allowing further private communications between some of those within the private chat-space (sub-threads). The invention concerns the organisation of private chat spaces and achieves this using a program for a computer to provide additional ‘nested’ layers of chat space.

The HO found the subject matter of the application to be excluded under section 1(2)(c) as a computer program as such, and refused the application under Section 18(3).

Full decision O/0189/24 243Kb