Patent decision

BL number
O/149/13
Concerning rights in
GB1011864.4
Hearing Officer
Mr P Slater
Decision date
11 April 2013
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Visa USA Inc
Provisions discussed
PA 1977 Section 1(2)
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

The invention relates to a method and/or apparatus for conducting financial transactions or the making of electronic payments wherein so called “push” transactions i.e. transactions initiated by the purchaser are completed without having to establish a direct connection with the seller (“or payee”). In order for the payment to be made, the purchaser sends a payment instruction message e.g. in the form of an e-mail, including payee information which is used to identify the person to whom the payment should be made, to a central server. In the prior art, the payee information included a “merchant identifier” which was used to uniquely identify the payee. However, in the present application there is no merchant identifier as such, and payments are made on the basis of payee information contained within the payment instruction message. The invention specifically deals with the case where the payment instruction message includes only partial payee information which insufficient to uniquely identify the payee, for example, where the partial payee information includes an incomplete payee name or a wrong address. In this case, software running on the server can be used to determine the complete payee name and correct address and to “substantially” complete the payee information to a degree of accuracy required to make the payment. A payment authorisation is then sent to the purchaser’s bank or credit card company to complete the payment. There are various embodiments described wherein searching of third party databases, fuzzy logic and neural network models are used to complete the payee information.

The Hearing Officer considered the four-step test in Aerotel/Macrossan in the light of the Symbian judgment, and found the contribution to relate to a business method and a computer program as such, and having found no technical contribution refused the application under Section 18(3).

Full decision O/149/13 PDF document64Kb