Patent decision

BL number

O/530/21

Concerning rights in

GB1305636.1

Hearing Officer

Mrs C L Davies

Decision date

13 July 2021

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Thunderhead Limited

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention relates to testing content for delivery to content consumers. In particular, it relates to multi variant testing. Multi variant testing is a process by which any number of components of content, such as components of a webpage, may be tested. Multi variant testing effectively allows numerous A/B tests to be performed for content comprising an assembly of content parts, at the same time. Multi variant testing can allow for a large number of possible combinations of content in numerous configurations. In view of the large number of possible variations, multi variant testing is constrained by the available time and population of content receivers (such as users). An example of content for which split or multi variant testing may be performed is the series of steps involved in a purchase on an electronic commerce web site. Any improvements in drop-off rates and failures to convert visitors to sales can represent additional sales for an electronic commerce provider.

The invention relates to a method of receiving content consumer attributes from all content consumers; generating a content assembly based on all content consumer attributes and historical content configuration information for each content consumer; delivering the content assembly to at least one content consumer; recording metrics associated with interaction between the content consumer and the content assembly; and updating the historical content configuration information based on the metrics for that one content consumer, wherein the historical content configuration information includes efficacy information about historical content assemblies for each content consumer attribute in the set of possible content consumer attributes for the at least one consumer and the efficacy information relating to combinations of any modifiable consumer attributes with other consumer attributes for a desired level of efficacy of presentation of the content assembly to the at least one content consumer and defined by the historical content configuration information.

On applying theAerotel/Macrossantest, the Hearing Officer found that the claimed invention was excluded as a computer program as such and a method of doing busines as such. The application was refused under section 18(3).

Full decisionO/530/21  371Kb