Patent decision

BL number
O/121/04
Concerning rights in
GB9921343.1
Hearing Officer
Mr A Bartlett
Decision date
29 April 2004
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Fujitsu Limited
Provisions discussed
PA 1977 Patents Act section 1(2)
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

The invention concerns a system enabling customers to do their grocery shopping from home via the internet. The home shopping system is hosted on a grocery store's server which includes a database including information on all the products available to customers. These include standard items such as price, weight and volume of goods but also 'environmental storage metrics' which indicate the conditions under which each item should be stored. In the embodiments described these are the categories 'room temperature', 'refrigerated' and 'frozen'. When a customer is placing an order online, a virtual shopping basket is displayed on their pc screen including an indication of the volume of items already selected in each of the storage categories. The storage information on the server is used by clerks at the store to make up orders and load them onto delivery vehicles having separate storage compartments providing room temperature, refrigerator and freezer conditions.

The hearing officer decided that the invention was excluded as a method for doing business and a program for a computer as such. Whilst the claims included technical features, the invention did not provide a technical contribution. There were two distinct parts to the claimed invention - the provision of information to the shopper via the virtual shopping basket concerning the quantity of items (s)he had already ordered requiring the various storage requirements and the delivery of these via a suitable vehicle. However, there was no direct technical result produced by the invention due to the lack of causality between the two parts of the claims.

Full decision O/121/04 PDF document34Kb