Patent decision

BL number

O/460/14

Concerning rights in

GB1110449.4

Hearing Officer

Mr S Brown

Decision date

27 October 2014

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

PET Technology Store limited

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 sections 1(1)(b), 1(2) and 76(2).

Keywords

Added subject matter, Excluded fields (refused), Inventive step

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to a system for identifying lost or stolen animals and reuniting them with their owners.

The hearing officer decided that the claims as most recently amended included added matter that was not present in the application as filed.

He also applied the Windsurfing/Pozzoli test and concluded that the claims were inventive over the cited prior art. This remained true even when the added subject matter was omitted.

Finally, the Hearing Officer applied the Aerotel/Macrossan test and identified that the contribution made by the invention resided in processing data such that only unique identification numbers were provided to hand-held scanners with owner personal data being held elsewhere. As this was done in order to conform with data protection legislation the hearing officer concluded that the contribution fell solely within excluded matter and did not have a relevant technical effect. The application was refused as no more than some combination of a method of doing business and a programme for a computer as such.

Full decision O/460/14 52Kb