Patent decision

BL number
O/710/19
Concerning rights in
GB1416583.1
Hearing Officer
Mrs S E Chalmers
Decision date
21 November 2019
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Intuit Inc
Provisions discussed
Patents Act 1977 Section 1(2)
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

The application provides a method for extracting data from an electronic document, such as an invoice, received with a message from an electronic address of the sender by iteratively selecting a map from a subset of maps, each of which is associated with the electronic address of the sender and includes data field definitions; determining whether the location data of document elements and data fields of the selected map identify the same location; if the locations are the same, the value of data fields of the selected map are extracted from document elements, and if the locations are not the same, a new map from the subset is selected; calculations are performed on the values of data fields and the results stored in an XML file on a data store.

The Hearing Officer applied the four-step approach set out in Aerotel/Macrossan in the light of the judgments in Symbian, AT&T and HTC amongst others and found that the invention was excluded as a method of doing business and program for a computer as such. The application was refused.

Full decision O/710/19 PDF document283Kb