Patent decision

BL number

O/734/18

Concerning rights in

GB1501383.2

Hearing Officer

Mr S Brown

Decision date

15 November 2018

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Lenovo (Singapore) PTE. LTD

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(1)

Keywords

Inventive step, Novelty

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application lies in the field of automatic speech recognition (ASR), in particular in adjusting an ASR engine using contextual information. This contextual information may be related to the current operation of a device. For example, if the user is currently listening to music using a music player the ASR could be adjusted to ‘expect’ commands such as “play” or “stop”.

The hearing officer applied the reasoning in SABAF v MFI and concluded that the claims related to two separate integers each performing its own function. He further concluded that these integers were anticipated either by the disclosure in US 2009/0150156 or by common general knowledge. For completeness, the hearing officer also considered the application of the Windsurfing/Pozzoli test as if there were no collocation and found the claims to lack the required inventive step, in that scenario. The application was thus refused under section 18(3).

Full decision O/734/18 283Kb