BAILII is celebrating 24 years of free online access to the law! Would you consider making a contribution?
No donation is too small. If every visitor before 31 December gives just £1, it will have a significant impact on BAILII's ability to continue providing free access to the law.
Thank you very much for your support!
 |
[Home] [Databases] [World Law] [Multidatabase Search] [Help] [Feedback] | |
United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions |
||
|
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions >> Fisher -Rosemount Systems, Inc (Patent) [2007] UKIntelP o30707 (17 October 2007) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKIntelP/2007/o30707.html Cite as: [2007] UKIntelP o30707 |
||
[New search] [Printable PDF version] [Help]
For the whole decision click here: o30707
Summary
In a control system intended to maintain the necessary functional isolation between process control and safety networks in a process plant, a user workstation was coupled to the networks via a shared communication network so that the user could configure the operation of both the process control and safety systems by assigning modules to elements within the appropriate networks and downloading them via the shared network. Claims were made to both a configuration system and to a process plant including the configuration system, the workstation, and the networks. Following Aerotel/Macrossan [2006] EWCA Civ 1371, the hearing officer found (i) that the contribution of the configuration system claims related solely to a computer program, but (ii) that the contribution of the process plant claims, which included the shared communications network by which the advantages of the invention were obtained, did not relate solely to excluded matter. Contribution (i) having failed the third step of the Aerotel/Macrossan test, it was necessary in the fourth step only to consider whether contribution (ii) was technical in nature; the hearing officer held that it was. He remitted the application for further examination on the basis of the process plant claims.
