Patent decision

BL number
O/312/15
Concerning rights in
GB1109923.1
Hearing Officer
Miss J Pullen
Decision date
6 July 2015
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
The Boeing Company
Provisions discussed
Section 1(2)
Keywords
Excluded fields (allowed)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

The application relates to maintenance procedures for aircraft. During the maintenance of an aircraft a component may be identified by scanning a bar code, removed for maintenance procedures and then replaced. A history of data unique to each component can then be accumulated over the life of the component and can be compared to baseline data, such as average operating lifetime and failure rate to determine if the component is considered to be a rogue component and an alert is issued to a user for the component to be discarded. The method results in improvements to aircraft maintenance and therefore, aircraft safety. The claim was considered to be more than a mere business method and also overcame the computer program exclusion. The application was remitted back to the examiner for further substantive examination of deferred matters.

Full decision O/312/15 PDF document249Kb