Patent decision

BL number

O/0932/24

Hearing Officer

Dr A Rose

Decision date

25 September 2024

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Snap-On Incorporated

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 section 1(1)(b), section 3

Keywords

Inventive step

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to a hand-held power tool such as a drill or screwdriver. The tool contains a groove on the side of the housing suitable for receiving an index finger of a user whilst the trigger is operable by the user’s middle finger.

The Hearing Officer carefully construed the claims and decided that the claims were inventive over the documents cited by the examiner, which were examples of many that were potentially relevant to the inventiveness of the originally filed claims.

However, the Hearing Officer requested that the search was completed as part of the process of making a decision on the papers, and the applicant filed amended main and auxiliary claimsets in response to two newly found pieces of prior art.

The Hearing Officer applied the Windsurfing/Pozzoli test to conclude that neither the main independent claims, the auxiliary independent claims, nor any of the respective dependent claims were inventive over the prior art and the application was refused.

Full decision O/0932/24 1012Kb