Patent decision

BL number

O/365/04

Concerning rights in

GB0114842.8

Hearing Officer

Mr A Bartlett

Decision date

7 December 2004

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Honda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Provisions discussed

PA.1977 section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention relates to the automatic classification of documents. In the embodiment described this is the assessment of cost estimates / tender documents for compliance with the requirements of a customer, saving time and effort over a manual assessment. Although embodied as a system of computer hardware, it was held that this hardware configuration was dictated by the requirements of the business process which it operated, following the earlier Office decision in eBay's Application, BL O/314/04.

Held that the implementation did not involve any technical contribution and that therefore the application was excluded from patentability as a method of doing business and as a program for a computer as such.

Full decision O/365/04 36Kb