Patent decision

BL number

O/283/18

Concerning rights in

GB13025451.6

Hearing Officer

Mrs S E Chalmers

Decision date

10 May 2018

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Emerson Process Management Power and Water Solutions Inc

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention relates to a computer simulation of the flows and pressures between various nodes of a process network such as those used in a power generation plant. The process network has junction nodes and non-junction nodes, in which values of flow characteristics are calculated by first solving simultaneously for the junction nodes and then solving sequentially for the non-junction nodes

Prior to the hearing, the applicant filed a main set of claims and five sets of auxiliary claims. In response, the Hearing Officer expressed the view that consideration of six claim sets was not an effective use of the Tribunal’s time and the matter was taken as a preliminary issue at the hearing. Noting the judgment in Nokia GmbH v IPCom GmbH [2012] EWHC 225 (Pat) where the judge explicitly warned against the presentation of “a smorgasbord of alternative monopolies”, she decided that considering multiple sets of claims would not be a good use of the Tribunal’s resources and there was no onus on her to do so. She therefore limited the applicant to two sets of auxiliary claims.

The Hearing Officer applied the four step approach set out in Aerotel/Macrossan in the light of the Symbian, AT&T and HTC judgments and the Vicom decision, and found that the invention was excluded as a program for a computer as such. The application was refused.

Full decision O/283/18 110Kb