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United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions >> Fisher -Rosemount Systems, Inc (Patent) [2007] UKIntelP o02607 (19 January 2007) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKIntelP/2007/o02607.html Cite as: [2007] UKIntelP o2607, [2007] UKIntelP o02607 |
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For the whole decision click here: o02607
Summary
The application related to the modification of a process control system, allowing new function blocks controlling aspects of a process to be created by a user and integrated into the whole system. The hearing officer followed the four-step approach to the assessment of patentability under section 1(2) approved by the Court of Appeal in Aerotel/Macrossan [2006] EWCA Civ 1371 in determining whether the invention was excluded from patentability. He held that as the applicant had accepted that it was known for a programmer to rewrite function blocks appropriately from scratch, albeit requiring low-level programming skills, the contribution made by the invention was a system which made it easier to modify a control system. This system being a computer program to modify the programming of the control system, he held that the invention was excluded from patentability as it was a computer program as such.
