Patent decision

BL number

O/846/21

Concerning rights in

GB1910434.8

Hearing Officer

Mr H Jones

Decision date

17 November 2021

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Motorola Solutions, Inc

Provisions discussed

Section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to managing emergency messaging where, for example, a public safety organisation may transmit a reverse emergency message to one or more network-connectable devices located within a geographic area impacted by the emergency. In the invention, a processor is configured to determine that a data feed from a network-connectable device is related to an incident, determine a confidence value for the incident, and according to the confidence value either: transmit a reverse emergency message automatically, or transmit it after confirmation.

The Hearing Officer applied the four-step test set out in the Court of Appeal judgment in Aerotel and considered the AT&T signposts for the set of claims presently on file (main request) as well as for four sets of amended claims (first-fourth auxiliary requests). In each case, he decided that the contribution made by the invention is not technical in nature. He found that the contribution falls solely within excluded subject matter as no more than a program for a computer and a method for doing business as such. The application was refused.

Full decision O/846/21 240Kb