Patent decision
- BL number
- O/333/20
- Concerning rights in
- GB1604161.8
- Hearing Officer
- Mr B Buchanan
- Decision date
- 23 June 2020
- Person(s) or Company(s) involved
- Dr. Wei Wu
- Provisions discussed
- PA 1977 sections 1(2)(c), 3, 14(3)
- Keywords
- Excluded fields (allowed), Inventive step, Sufficiency
- Related Decisions
- None
Summary
The application relates to the field of auscultation, otherwise known as audification. Audification is the process of transforming inaudible signals into an audible format. A simple example is a stethoscope, rendering the beat of the heart audible. The present invention enables the audification of signals which are inaudible e.g. because the frequency of data sampling or variation is too low or too high, or because it does not vary with time; for example, it may vary by location, trajectory or by sample dataset. The application achieves this by extracting a waveform from a signal A, divorcing the signal of time-series data if the signal is time-variant, and mapping the waveform into an audible signal B by combining the waveform with an independent audible play rate.
The Hearing Officer construed the claim broadly, determining that some conditional limitations were not essential and did not affect the scope of the claim. He found that the examiner was not estopped from raising an objection to excluded matter at a late stage and that the application relates to patentable subject matter not excluded by section 1(2) as a program for a computer, but found the claims in their current form to be insufficient for excessive claim breadth. However, he concluded that if the claims were amended so as to clearly limit their scope to define signal A being voltage change of an electronic circuit representing electromagnetic interference distribution on a circuit board, they would potentially satisfy section 14(3) and consequentially section 3. The application was remitted to the Examiner to await a response from the Applicant.
Full decision O/333/20 
633Kb
