Patent decision

BL number

O/603/21

Concerning rights in

GB1722307.4

Hearing Officer

Mr B Buchanan

Decision date

17 August 2021

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Innoplexus AG

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977 section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The claimed invention relates to a method, system, and program for identifying an increasingly popular (nascent) topic related to a field of interest and addresses the problem of analysing aggregated data across multiple channels. The topic may be provided by a user as a search query, and the claimed invention can analyse data from multiple channels such as forums and blogs on the internet as well as other sources. By using the invention, a user can reliably and accurately discover sustained increasing references to e.g. a specific medical treatment and use the information to assist investment, research and innovation.

The Hearing Officer followed the four step Aerotel/Macrossan test to determine whether there was a technical contribution and considered the AT&T (HTC/Apple) signposts. The identified contribution was not found to provide the required technical effect and the claimed invention was found to relate solely to a program for a computer as such, so the application did not meet the requirements of section 1(2)(c). The application was refused under section 18(3).

Full decision O/603/21 299Kb