Patent decision

BL number
O/182/07
Concerning rights in
GB0507205.3
Hearing Officer
Mr A Bartlett
Decision date
28 June 2007
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
HotSpot FX, Inc.
Provisions discussed
Section 1(2)
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

The application relates to a system for facilitating transactions of financial instruments between a plurality of trader workstations in which if bids and offers are automated they are prevented from being matched.

The Hearing Officer applied the four step test from the Court of Appeal in Aerotel Ltd v Telco Holdings Ltd (and others) and Macrossan’s application [2007] RPC 7. Identifying the contribution made by the invention as “a computerized trading system which prevents transactions being completed if it is determined that bids or offers are automated with the result that the trading system is more stable and less likely to crash when there are too many trades in too short a time”; he went on to find that this was a method of doing business and a program for a computer as such and refused the application.

Full decision O/182/07 PDF document43Kb