Patent decision
- BL number
- O/0624/23
- Concerning rights in
- GB1816656.1
- Hearing Officer
- Dr L Cullen
- Decision date
- 3 July 2023
- Person(s) or Company(s) involved
- Phillip Sutton
- Provisions discussed
- Patents Act 1977; sections 1(1)(b); 76(2)
- Keywords
- Added subject matter, Inventive step
- Related Decisions
- None
Summary
The application relates to a method of marking the packaging of a product, which allows the product to be tracked throughout its lifecycle, from packaging at the manufacturing plant, through to purchase by the consumer, kerbside recycling and recovery at a materials recovery facility. The packaging is marked using a visible machine readable 2D data matrix code, which contains information including the manufacturer, brand or composition of the product, and this can be read at any point in the lifecycle of the product, where the information can be transferred to a remote database on a corporate network. The packaging also contains a second machine readable code which fluoresces under excitation conditions, where the shape or colour of this code is readable during the recycling phase and identifies the manufacturer or brand or composition of the product.
The hearing officer (HO) considered that the latest set of claims, as amended, did not comprise added matter but related to two distinct inventive concepts performing two separate purposes in line with SABAF SpA v MFI Furniture Centres Ltd [2005] RPC 10. The HO considered that the features of the claimed invention related to two integers where each integer performs their function separately of the other and so represents a collocation. Using the structured approach set out in Windsurfing International Inc. v Tabur Marine (Great Britain) Ltd for assessing inventive step, the HO found that, when considered separately, each of these inventive concepts was found to lack an inventive step over the cited prior art. An auxiliary claim request submitted with the skeleton arguments for the hearing was considered to overcome the collocation argument by defining a single marker with two functions. As this auxiliary claim set appeared to be inventive over the cited prior art, it was considered by the HO to represent a useful way forward.
Full decision O/0624/23 
404Kb
