Patent decision

BL number
O/218/08
Concerning rights in
GB0422298.0; GB0422300.4
Hearing Officer
Mr R C Kennell
Decision date
31 July 2008
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Symbian Software Ltd.
Provisions discussed
PA 1977 Section 1(2)
Keywords
Excluded fields (refused)
Related Decisions
None

Summary

In these related applications, ‘300 related to an extensible framework in which parsers and/or generators (P/G) were implemented as plug-ins with a common API that enabled a P/G to access data from any source conforming to the API, so that it was unnecessary to hard-code a client to cope with a specific P/G. ‘298 related to a mapping which enabled a client to use a unique integer value to map to either a text or a binary mark-up language so that the client could parse a document without needing to know its language. Applying the Aerotel test and refusing the applications as relating to computer programs as such, the hearing officer held that in each case any increase in processing speed arose because a program had been devised which made more efficient use of the computer’s resources and economised on the use of memory, and like Gale did not represent any process existing outside the computer or solve any problem in its operation. The hearing officer declined to extend the principle in Symbian [2008] EWHC 518 to the present applications and distinguished a number of other authorities cited at the hearing.

Full decision O/218/08 PDF document55Kb