Patent decision

BL number

O/215/04

Concerning rights in

GB 0217000.9

Hearing Officer

Mr A Bartlett

Decision date

19 July 2004

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Optimumportfolio.com, LLC

Provisions discussed

Patents Act 1977 section 1(2)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to a computer system for the automatic selection of securities for an investment portfolio. An investor selects investment characteristics, such as the risk (s)he is willing to take, and investment limits, such as the spread of investment, which (s)he considers important. The system then constructs a characteristics matrix on the basis of those investment characteristics and limits and all the candidate securities available. An objective function is then established corresponding to the characteristics matrix and finally the portfolio content is selected on the basis of the characteristics matrix and the objective function.

In refusing the application as a method for doing business and a program for a computer as such, the hearing officer decided that using the known concepts of objective functions and linear programming to allow more options to be considered did not provide the technical contribution required to make an otherwise excluded item patentable. That the system could consider a larger number of options than conventional techniques was just the sort of advantage to be expected from using these known programming techniques.

Full decision O/215/04 47Kb