Patent decision
- BL number
- O/209/18
- Concerning rights in
- Patent Application GB1210743.9
- Hearing Officer
- Dr J E Porter
- Decision date
- 3 April 2018
- Person(s) or Company(s) involved
- Vetana Medical Systems
- Provisions discussed
- Patents Act 1977 section 1(2)
- Keywords
- Excluded fields (refused)
- Related Decisions
- None
Summary
The application concerned an improved virtual microscope for viewing virtual slides (digitally scanned tissue sample slides). A pathologist views the virtual slides in order to carry out a medical diagnosis. The invention allows the pathologist to view virtual slides more efficiently and reliably. All the virtual slides from a particular subject are displayed in a first region of the interface at a low magnification. A second region displays one of the slides shown in the first region at a second, higher magnification, and a third region provides the same image at an intermediate magnification. A visual guide in the first region indicates the part of the slide image being shown at the higher magnification in the second region. The user can choose to view any area of interest from any of the slides shown in the first region, at a higher magnification level in the second and third regions.
The hearing officer followed the Aerotel steps to determine whether the invention was excluded from patentability. He concluded that the contribution made by the invention was an improved way of displaying virtual slides in a virtual microscope. It did not go so far as to encompass an improved diagnostic method or technique carried out by the pathologist.
This was no more than the presentation of information. It did not matter whether the contribution was termed with reference to a better display of virtual slides or to a better virtual microscope. There was no “real world technical achievement outside the information itself”, in the sense seen (for example) in the way that the third Gemstar patent involved a better electronic guide with a function having the physical effect of moving data between storage means. To the extent that the contribution was a "better user interface", he noted that in Gemstar the court rejected the argument that providing a better or new user interface delivers a technical effect.
He considered that the contribution did not solve a technical problem and that the AT&T/CVON signposts did not point towards the contribution being “technical in nature”. To the extent that the improved display and arrangement of virtual slides was an effect which is external to the computer, it was an effect which lay wholly within the excluded area of presentation of information. The application was refused.
Full decision O/209/18 
138Kb
