Patent decision

BL number
O/139/14
Concerning rights in
GB2350989
Hearing Officer
Mr H Jones
Decision date
28 March 2014
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Duncan Riach & Anthony Brown v Fulcrum Systems Ltd
Provisions discussed
Section 13
Keywords
Inventorship
Related Decisions
O/378/13

Summary

The claimants were students at Reading University from October 1992 to July 1995. As part of their final year dissertation project they were tasked by Fulcrum Systems Ltd with developing an electronic system to cancel background noise entering telephone handsets in stock exchange rooms. In their dissertation reports, they noted that the system they developed would be useful in reducing siren noise in emergency service vehicles. Fulcrum filed a patent application for a similar system some four years later and the claimants claim a right to be named as inventors. The patent application derived from a collaboration project between Reading University and Fulcrum which began a few years after the claimants left the University. On the basis of the evidence filed, the Hearing Officer found that the invention was arrived at independently of the work of the claimants and dismissed their application to be named as inventors.

Full decision O/139/14 PDF document164Kb