Patent decision
- BL number
- O/110/04
- Concerning rights in
- GB0202317.4
- Hearing Officer
- Mr A Bartlett
- Decision date
- 22 April 2004
- Person(s) or Company(s) involved
- Worldlingo.Com Pty Ltd
- Provisions discussed
- 1977 Patents Act section 1(2)
- Keywords
- Excluded fields (refused)
- Related Decisions
- None
Summary
The invention provides a machine translation of a foreign language electronic communication and a quotation for a manual translation of the communication along with the communication itself. The hearing officer found that the steps of recognising the communication to be in a foreign language and of providing the machine translation and quotation for a manual translation to each be mental acts. Even though a human operator might not be able to carry out these processes simultaneously (or as quickly as the computerised system could) it was held this was just the sort of advantage to be expected from automating the process and thus not to provide a technical contribution.
The application was refused as the invention related to a program for a computer, a method for performing a mental act and a method for doing business as such.
Full decision O/110/04 
45Kb
