Patent decision

BL number
O/193/07
Concerning rights in
GB0602737.9
Hearing Officer
Mr J Rowlatt
Decision date
13 July 2007
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Spinvox Limited.
Provisions discussed
PA 1977 Section 1(2)(c)
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

The application relates to the conversion of a voicemail sent to a mobile telephone into a text message sent back to that mobile telephone. Rather than use computer conversion as in the prior art, a human operator listens to the voice message, provides a succinct intelligent rendering of the voice message and transcribes it into a text message. The Hearing Officer considered the recent Court of Appeal judgment in Aerotel/Macrossan and decided that the actual contribution made by the invention fell solely within the meaning of a method for performing a mental act. It was not formally necessary to consider whether the contribution was technical in nature as set out in the fourth step of the Aerotel/Macrossan test. The application was refused.

Full decision O/193/07 PDF document43Kb