Patent decision
- BL number
- O/174/07
- Concerning rights in
- GB0227657.4
- Hearing Officer
- Mr R C Kennell
- Decision date
- 21 June 2007
- Person(s) or Company(s) involved
- Sony United Kingdom Limited
- Provisions discussed
- PA 1977 section 1(2)
- Keywords
- Excluded fields (refused)
- Related Decisions
- O/010/07
Summary
The invention related to information retrieval and storage by mapping distinct information items to respective nodes in an array of nodes so that similar items mapped to similar positions; for greater awareness of the information associated with selected nodes, selected nodes were displayed together with representations of the information items to which they related. At the hearing the claims were restricted to the information items being video metadata and to the sequential display in time of pictorial representations of the video material to which selected metadata related. Applying the Aerotel/Macrossan test, the hearing officer held that the contribution of the invention lay in associating selected information items with representations thereof rather than in the use of metadata for more effective searching of video material, and did not think there was a new physical combination of hardware representing a new video processing apparatus. He held that the contribution related solely to a computer program or to the presentation of information. Unlike the applicant’s earlier case O/010/07 also relating to video metadata, he could not see any limitation of the claims which might define a contribution not relating solely to excluded matter and therefore refused the application.
Full decision O/174/07 
38Kb
