Patent decision

BL number
O/129/19
Concerning rights in
GB 1212805.4, GB 1815543.2
Hearing Officer
Mr B Micklewright
Decision date
8 March 2019
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
International Business Machines Corporation
Provisions discussed
Patents Act 1977 sections 1(1)(d), 1(2)
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

In these parent and divisional applications the inventions related to methods of indexing documents involving a document structure whereby indexing information is stored in an area of a page of the document which is ignored by typical applications processing the document. The hearing officer, following the Aerotel approach and considering the AT&T signposts, decided that the inventions were excluded from patentability as a program for a computer as such. He therefore refused the applications.

Full decision O/129/19 PDF document119Kb