Patent decision

BL number

O/636/19

Concerning rights in

GB1407511.3

Hearing Officer

Mr B Buchanan

Decision date

21 October 2019

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Thomson Reuters Global Resources Unlimited Company

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to a method of providing a database of contracts to enable a user to identify preferred wording when drafting a contract. This is achieved by merging a collection of related existing contract texts, comprising contract clauses, into a cluster based on a similarity comparison with a threshold. The similarity measurement is determined according to a calculated centroid value for each corpus. Following a merge, a new centroid value for the cluster is estimated rather than recalculated, saving computational resource. A model contract is developed based on the probabilities of certain contract clauses appearing in the cluster. This model contract is representative of the “market standard” language for a particular type of contract. Portions of contract text (e.g. clauses) can then be compared to the model to determine how much they deviate from it (using a so-called “novelty measurement”) and the results can be provided to a user, to facilitate the drawing up of a contract. The Hearing Officer agreed with the examiner’s reasoning which followed the four step Aerotel test to determine whether there was a technical contribution and applied the AT&T signposts as modified in HTC. The contribution was not found to provide the required technical effect and the claimed invention related solely to a program for a computer and a method for doing business as such, so the application did not meet the requirements of section 1(2)(c). The application was refused under section 18(3).

Full decision O/636/19 203Kb