Patent decision

BL number

O/136/07

Concerning rights in

GB0325503.1

Hearing Officer

Mr R C Kennell

Decision date

23 May 2007

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

eSpeed, Inc.

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention claimed a system and method for allowing traders in financial instruments to switch between multiple issues in a trading quadrant including a benchmark issue and at least one associated non-benchmark issue by means of a customised keyboard rather than by using a standard keyboard and mouse. Applying the Aerotel/Macrossan test the hearing officer found the contribution of the invention to be excluded under section 1(2) because the customisation of the keyboard was a consequence of the way in which the system was programmed rather than a new hardware feature in its own right as in the Aerotel appeal in Aerotel/Macrossan. Noting that the invention required only the hitting of a buy or sell key to complete a transaction, the hearing officer also found the contribution to be excluded as a business method in the light of the Court of Appeal’s view in Aerotel/Macrossan that the exclusion was not limited to abstract matters or to completed transactions. It was not therefore necessary to consider whether the contribution was technical in nature, but the hearing officer did not accept that the invention lay in the technical field of man-machine interfacing by reason of it producing a new trading interface.

Full decision O/136/07 41Kb