Patent decision

BL number

O/0894/26

Concerning rights in

GB1904713.3

Hearing Officer

Mr S Brown

Decision date

1 October 2026

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Emotional Perception AI Ltd.

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977 Section 1(1) and 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused), Inventive step

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application concerns a computer implemented Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for recommending semantically better files, most specifically music files.

The Supreme Court (Emotional Perception AI Ltd. V Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, [2026] UKSC 3) held that the ANN was a program for a computer but that the invention was not excluded under sec. 1(2) as it included computer hardware. They then remitted the application to the IPO to consider the remaining steps of the Duns approach as set out in EPO Decision G1/19.

The hearing Officer decided that outputting a ‘semantically better’ file was not a technical result and that therefore the details of how the file was chosen, i.e. the details of the ANN’s learning objectives and how they trained the ANN to close the ‘semantic gap’, could not contribute to the technical character of the claim as a whole. This rendered these details ineligible differences for the purposes of assessing inventive step and the hearing officer decided that what remained was obvious over common general knowledge.

The application was thus refused under section 18(3).

Full decision O/0894/26 294Kb