Patent decision

BL number

O/165/04

Concerning rights in

GB0108683.4

Hearing Officer

Mr H Jones

Decision date

7 June 2004

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Cecil Lloyd Crawford

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to a display for indicating whether a bus is available to pick up passengers and also to a method of operating a bus in an exit mode so as to overcome the problem of bunching. The applicant concedes that the functional aspects of the display are entirely conventional. The applicant argued that his invention did make a technical contribution - there are scientific reasons why buses group up and so the solution of how to address the phenomenon would also have to be looked at from a scientific basis. The hearing officer found that the invention was concerned with a method of doing business and the presentation of information, and that it did not provide a technical contribution required to make an otherwise excluded invention patentable.

Full decision O/165/04 31Kb