Patent decision

BL number
O/228/09
Concerning rights in
GB0621082.7
Hearing Officer
Mr P Slater
Decision date
30 July 2009
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Fisher-Rosemount Systems Inc
Provisions discussed
PA 1977 Section 1(2)
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

Summary: The invention relates to a process control system and in particular to a method of accessing process control data, viewing and modifying that data and using the modified data to update control programs within the system. A typical process control system, for example, as used in a chemical or petroleum processing plant consists of a number of process controllers connected to an operator workstation and to one or more field devices such as valves, switches and sensors. The process controllers are arranged to receive data from the field devices and to exchange data with one or more user applications resident on the operator workstation. Operators are often constrained in the way they can access the data by the functions which are made available via the user application. User applications can be customized to add additional functionality but this a complex and expensive task, requiring the skills of an experienced software engineer to rewrite the systems software, to compile and to test it. The invention describes a method by which the operator is able to develop and to add functionality to their own applications at any time without the need to rewrite or compile the control system software. This is achieved by use of a client/server data interface which uses object oriented programming techniques to enable the user application or client to exchange data with the process control server. The client can request data from the server which is converted from a data format unique to the server, a “server schema” into a “client schema”, a format suitable for display at the operator’s workstation. The operator can then modify or update the control data and transfer it back to the server where it is converted back into the server schema. By virtue of the invention, the applicant has enabled what would otherwise be an incompatible user application to access process control data from the server by providing a mapping function for converting data from a server schema into a more generic client schema and vice versa.

The hearing officer considered the four-step test in Aerotel/Macrossan in the light of the Symbian judgment, and found the contribution to relate to computer program for transferring and converting data between various schema or formats. The Hearing Officer could find no technical contribution and so refused the application under Section 18(3).

Full decision O/228/09 PDF document59Kb