Patent decision

BL number

O/196/08

Concerning rights in

GB0607202.9

Hearing Officer

Dr J E Porter

Decision date

7 July 2008

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Aspect Communications Corporation

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977 section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention concerned the operation of “call centres” for contacting or supporting the customers of an organisation, and comprised a method of and system for scheduling a “call-back” to a customer who contacted the call centre. By calculating estimated available resources in the call centre and by forecasting the customer service workload, a call-back time for a particular customer is calculated. Furthermore, a particular means of communicating with the customer is selected and used, such as conventional telephony, Voice over Internet Protocol or instant messaging. When contacted, the customer is asked to provide a response which the system uses to confirm his identity, based upon previously-acquired caller data or other identifying information.

The hearing officer followed the steps set out in Aerotel in order to determine whether the invention was excluded from patentability. Having considering the prior art and the interaction between the various features of the invention, he concluded that the contribution made by the invention lay in the steps of scheduling a call-back time, and that this contribution fell solely within excluded matter, as it was no more than a method for doing business and a program for a computer. Regardless of whether step four of the Aerotel test is an optional check or not, the hearing officer was in any event satisfied that the contribution made by the invention contained nothing which was technical in nature.

Full decision O/196/08 46Kb