Patent decision

BL number

O/375/19

Concerning rights in

GB1502844.2

Hearing Officer

Mr P Mason

Decision date

5 July 2019

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Motorola Solutions Inc.

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977 Section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (allowed)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to a method and related apparatus for identifying suspect devices across multiple criminal events at different locations. In particular the invention involves taking information from a large number of mobile devices (e.g. mobile phones); identifying a subset of devices common to two separate criminal events; determining route information for this subset of devices; and activating cameras along a predicted path.

The Hearing Officer applied the four-step approach set out in the Court of Appeal judgment in Aerotel and considered in particular the first AT&T signpost. The Hearing Officer found the contribution made by the invention to have a technical effect on a process which is carried on outside the computer and therefore to fall outside the excluded matter of a program for a computer and a method for doing business as such. The application was remitted to the examiner for further processing.

Full decision O/375/19 279Kb