Patent decision

BL number
O/457/02
Concerning rights in
GB 2314719
Hearing Officer
Mr P Hayward
Decision date
8 November 2002
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Eastman Kodak Company v American Photo Booths Inc
Provisions discussed
PA 1977, section 72(1), 1(1)
Keywords
Industrial application, Novelty, Revocation, Sufficiency
Related Decisions
O/145/02

Summary

The claimant sought revocation of the patent on the grounds of novelty (and inventive step of some subordinate claims) and, added to the Statement of Grounds following a preliminary decision, industrial applicability and/or sufficiency. Found that a passage of claims 1 and 6 was incapable of being construed by a person skilled in the art and that the claimed invention therefore cannot work and cannot be capable of industrial application. As a result, the specification does not (and could not) disclose the invention clearly enough and completely enough for it to be performed by a person skilled in the art.

Even if the invention were considered capable of industrial application and sufficiently described, claim 1 found lacking in novelty, but no finding made on the novelty of claim 6, nor on novelty or inventive step of subordinate and omnibus claims.

Full decision O/457/02 PDF document32Kb