Patent decision
- BL number
- O/038/15
- Concerning rights in
- GB1113425.1
- Hearing Officer
- Dr J Houlihan
- Decision date
- 26 January 2015
- Person(s) or Company(s) involved
- BlueCava Inc
- Provisions discussed
- Patents Act 1977 Section 1(2)(c)
- Keywords
- Excluded fields (refused)
- Related Decisions
- None
Summary
The alleged invention relates to a method and computer system to provide users with a customised or tailored experience when interfacing with networked computer services without disclosing personally identifiable information (PII). A request for user behaviour data containing an identifier of a user’s device is received at a device-indexed data server which retrieves user behaviour data associated with the identifier from the server’s memory and updates the user behaviour data by retrieving additional user behaviour data from an aggregator using non-PII data; and sending the updated user behaviour data to the server that provides services to a user. The device-indexed server never receives PII data from the aggregator and the aggregator never receives an indication of the device identifier from the server. The hearing officer found that the actual contribution of the invention related entirely to a method of doing business which, as it was brought about by a computer program, also related to a computer program, as such. Amongst its submissions the applicant criticized the approach of UK courts in some judgments concerning section 1(2), for example the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Re. Aerotel [2007] RPC 7, and argued that EPO case law should be adopted in favour of UK case law in some instances. The hearing officer said he was bound to follow UK precedents and referred to the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Re. Lantana [2014] EWCA Civ 1463 which affirms that the Aerotel four step test is the correct approach for assessing excluded matter and that the so-called “AT&T” signposts modified by the Court of Appeal in HTC v Apple [2013] EWCA 451 are applicable guides for assessing whether a computer program, in particular, is excluded. Applying this test, the hearing officer found the invention to be excluded by Section 1(2) and refused the application.
Full decision O/038/15 
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