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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 >> Swapstream Limited (Patent) [2007] UKIntelP o12307 (11 May 2007) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKIntelP/2007/o12307.html Cite as: [2007] UKIntelP o12307 |
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For the whole decision click here: o12307
Summary
The invention related to a method of facilitating the operation of markets for financial instruments such as “SWAPS”. A key feature of markets such as this is that value attaches to participants’ individual price/order information and it is therefore important to control access to or distribution of such information. This was achieved in the invention by providing, in a system comprising a central host computer and a network of client computers, a central “cross-mapped permissions filter”, which uses permission data associated with each of the clients to filter data received from and transmitted to them. This meant that, typically, each client will see a different market view depending on their associated permission sets. In applying the four-step test for excluded matter set out in Aerotel Ltd v Telco Holdings Ltd and Macrossan’s Application [2006] EWCA Civ 1371, the Hearing Officer found that the contribution resided in the application in a multiuser system of permission set cross-mapping at the server to facilitate and permit appropriate data communication between client terminals. Being implemented on conventional hardware, this was held to be no more than a computer program . To the extent that the contribution might be reframed to take account of the objective of facilitating and permitting appropriate data communication, this could not extend beyond a business method and the application was consequently refused.
