Patent decision

BL number

O/325/18

Concerning rights in

GB1506763.0

Hearing Officer

Mr P Mason

Decision date

24 May 2018

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA

Provisions discussed

Section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention is in the field of data storage for web applications. In particular, a computer program (method) to manage a local storage capacity of a processing terminal to ascertain if a website content and/or page can be viewed by a user when browsing, and facilitating the deletion of data from local storage by evaluating free storage capacity with respect to new data to be viewed and extracting and displaying, to the user in an identifiable manner, candidate data to be deleted, which is then deleted on the user’s instruction. This allows the user to continue to view the website content i.e. data stored as cached data when the website is disconnected from a network and/or is offline.

The Hearing Officer applied the four step test set out in Aerotel/Macrossan and considered the AT&T signposts. He concluded that there was no relevant technical contribution to save the invention from being more than a program for a computer as such, and that the invention therefore related solely to subject matter excluded from being patented. Accordingly he refused the application.

Full decision O/325/18 296Kb