Patent decision

BL number

O/254/16

Concerning rights in

GB1508267.0

Hearing Officer

Mr B Buchanan

Decision date

20 May 2016

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

The Berkeley Group plc

Provisions discussed

Section 1(1)(b)

Keywords

Inventive step

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention relates to a housing structure intended for use in urban environments where land available for housing is limited. The structure comprises at least three pairs of back-to-back houses. Each pair shares an adjacent rear “blind-side” wall, and the pairs are arranged side-by-side in a terraced formation. Each house is provided with its own upper roof space (e.g. a garden) formed from a flat roof extending the full width of the house but set back from the blind-side. A lower roof extends across the width of each house pair and across the shared blind-side wall. The upper roof is accessible via external stairs from the lower roof. The lower roof is only accessible via a door from an upper floor of the property. The objective of the invention is to provide a secure, private outside roof space. The hearing officer considered whether the combination of claimed features was a matter of design or mere collocation. He found that the features did interact in providing the objective, but not in providing an alleged advantage to natural light inside the rear of the houses. He went on to consider whether the claims defined an inventive step and found that they consisted only of options which would be known or obvious to a person skilled in the art of domestic architecture and house-building. The application was refused under section 18(3).

Full decision O/254/16 91Kb