Patent decision

BL number

O/332/17

Concerning rights in

GB1413379.7

Hearing Officer

Dr J Houlihan

Decision date

14 July 2017

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Rex Edward Michau

Provisions discussed

Sections 1(1)(b), 14(5)(b) and 76(2)

Keywords

Added subject matter, Clarity, Inventive step

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to a system for the digestion of high volumes of organic waste to produce methane gas. The system comprises a plurality of containers which are connected end-on-end and stacked on top of each other to form tunnels. A plurality of bins containing organic waste are loaded into the containers/tunnels for a period of time, during which time anaerobic digestion of the organic waste takes place, and subsequently unloaded at the opposite end. A valve arrangement is provided to enable gas to be drawn off the containers/tunnels by a common outlet. A method describes using the apparatus in which the number of tunnels is selected on the basis of the amount of waste to be digested and the time it takes to digest that volume of waste.

The hearing officer found that the independent claims were not clear and contained added matter. However, following the principles of Re. Kirin Amgen he was able to purposively construe these claims and found that they involved an inventive step over each of three prior art documents cited by the examiner. The application was remitted to the examiner for further processing.

Full decision O/332/17 985Kb