Patent decision

BL number
O/031/17
Concerning rights in
GB1514027.0
Hearing Officer
Mr H Jones
Decision date
26 January 2017
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Acumen Design Associates Ltd
Provisions discussed
Sections 1(1)(a), 14(5)(b) and 18(5)
Keywords
Clarity, Divisional application, Novelty
Related Decisions
None

Summary

A claim set out in terms of the result to be achieved was found to be clear in scope once it was established that the test for verifying the result could be easily performed by a person skilled in the art. A novelty objection based on the examiner’s particular construction of the claim to overcome the clarity objection fell away. An issue of conflict arose from having the unclear claim deleted from the parent and filed as part of a divisional application, this tactic having being employed to expedite grant of the parent. The hearing officer found that the invention claimed in the divisional application, i.e. a pair of seating units suitable for use in a passenger aircraft cabin, differed to the invention claimed in the granted parent, i.e. a seating arrangement comprising a multiplicity of pairs of seating units. Conflict did not arise and the application was remitted to the examiner to complete examination.

Full decision O/031/17 PDF document132Kb