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 119Kb