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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

UK Patent Practice On CIIs.

From

IT Week:

"[...] The UK reinforced its opposition to software patents yesterday after the High Court rejected an appeal from news agency Bloomberg against the UK Patent Office, which had refused to grant a patent for the company's system of conveying financial information.

Justice Pumfrey upheld the Patent Office's decision that the Bloomberg program - which distributes financial data records to users working on different platforms by identifying the application the intended recipient is working on and delivering the data in the appropriate format - is pure software and therefore ineligible for a UK patent. [...]"

The article quoted above does not indicate the patent number, but I guess that it might refer to

GB0403012. In the matter of this patent application,

a hearing had been scheduled to be held before Mr. H. Jones, Hearing Officer, on June 15, 2006. Below, claim 1 of that application is quoted:

"A method of distributing data to users of a computer system, comprising:

identifying, from a plurality of formatted financial data records, data records to be electronically transferred to a plurality of users of the computer system in accordance with data indicating the data records that are to be delivered to respective users; and

mapping each identified data record for each user to whom the record is to be transferred in accordance with data indicating mapping of the respective data record for at least one application operable on a computer terminal accessible by the user to whom the data record is to be delivered."

Mr. Jones found that the advance made by the applicant lies wholly within the meaning of a computer program and is, therefore, not patentable. In particular, he stated that whilst the invention provides for re-formatting of the information prior to transmission, this is not done with the aim of reducing the burden placed on the network but merely serves to improve inter-operability with client applications. The only improvement in transmission efficiency is achieved by preventing irrelevant information being sent to the client.

Now, the High Court does not appear to have seen any different perspectives of that matter.

IPKat has a

nice overview concerning other cases of computer-implemented inventions decided since the judgment of the Court of Appeal in re Aerotel/Macrossan.

Mr. John Collins is a patent attorney involved in the Bloomberg matter. He argues:

"[...] John Collins, a partner at patent and trade mark attorneys Marks & Clerk, said that despite pure software patents being granted in the UK in the past this latest ruling appeared to confirm that an inventive hardware element must be involved for a company to obtain a patent on a computer-based invention.

However, he warned that such a stance could damage UK competitiveness because the country is now granting fewer patents for computer-based applications than the rest of Europe. 'The less permissive approach by the UK examiners and courts represents a disincentive for British firms to develop technical solutions,' he said. 'Time and effort is unlikely to be wasted developing technology, such as Bloomberg's new data delivery system, if it can be copied immediately by all and sundry in the UK.' [...]"

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