Patent decision

BL number

O/347/04

Concerning rights in

GB 0224087.7

Hearing Officer

Mr A Bartlett

Decision date

23 November 2004

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Sony Communication Network Corporation

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to computer apparatus for facilitating the exchange of messages between users, such that a message sender has to be given permission by a potential client in order to send a message to that client. The client and message sender initially enter personal data into a central data repository. When a client identifies a message sender that (s)he is willing to receive a message from, the client is registered with the message sender. The message sender is then able to send a message to the client.

In refusing the application as a method of doing business and a computer program as such, the hearing officer decided that the invention was not aimed at solving any technical problems, rather the identified problems were considered to be business/administrative ones. Solving these problems did not provide the required technical contribution. It was also decided that the feature of 'separation' between message sender and receiver was common place in internet based applications and that this did not provide the necessary technical contribution.

Full decision O/347/04 32Kb