Patent decision

BL number

O/524/21

Concerning rights in

GB1601418.5

Hearing Officer

Mr S Brown

Decision date

9 July 2021

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Landmark Graphics Corporation

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application concerns a method of visually representing hydrocarbon well activities. This visual representation is in the form of a bar chart with each bar representing an occurrence of a well-activity and the position and length of each bar indicating timing information for that activity. Event-bars can be updated using real-time data from sensors. In one embodiment, a bar chart may be generated for a planned well with ‘expected’ event bars based on aggregated data from past wells.

The Hearing Officer applied the Aerotel/Macrossan test and considered the signposts laid out in HTC v Apple. The Hearing Officer was not convinced by the argument that the contribution was a better method of modelling well behaviour and decided that the contribution made by the invention was excluded as a program for a computer, and as the presentation of information, as such. The application was thus refused under section 18(3).

Full decision O/524/21 198Kb