Patent decision

BL number
O/180/07
Concerning rights in
GB0505403.6, GB0600143.2, GB0600140.8
Hearing Officer
Mr H Jones
Decision date
26 June 2007
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
EMC Corporation
Provisions discussed
PA 1977 sections 1 & 14
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused), Inventive step
Related Decisions
None

Summary

The applications relate to techniques for automating the provisioning of a computer system to allow a system engineer to modify certain parameters relatively quickly by way of a computer interface. The parent application relates to the creation of a provisioning request that defines the preferred host computer, storage system and networking arrangements, and then the automatic configuration of the system in such a way that it satisfies the provisioning request. The Hearing Officer applied the four-step test set out by the Court of Appeal in Aerotel/Macrossan in determining that the actual contribution fell solely within the meaning of a program for a computer.

Divisional application ‘143.2 relates to a so-called "reverse engineering" option, which determines the configuration of an existing system and presents configuration information to the user for manual modification before automatically configuring the system in the manner disclosed in the parent. D ivisional application ‘140.8 relates to a so-called "undo" option, which creates a series of undo operations and assignments to rollback the system to an earlier working configuration if an unintended result is detected. The Hearing Officer applied the same four-step test and arrived at the same conclusion that the actual contributions fell solely within the meaning of a program for a computer.

All three applications were refused.

Full decision O/180/07 PDF document47Kb