NIPC Law

  Jane Lambert Court of Appeal (Lady Justice Nicola Davies and Lords Justices Birss and Arnold)  Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks v Emotional Perception AI Ltd [2024] EWCA Civ 825 (19 July 2024) This was an appeal by the Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks ("the Comptroller") from the decision of Sir Anthony Mann sitting as a judge of the High Court in    Emotional Perception AI Ltd v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2023] [2024] Bus LR 14, [2023] WLR(D) 500, [2023] EWHC 2948 (Ch)) (21 Nov 2023). Sir Anthony had allowed an appeal by Emotional Perceptions AI Ltd ("EPL") against the decision of the hearing officer Phil Thorpe in Re Emotional Perception AI Limited's Application  BL/O/542/22 of 22 June 2022. In that decision, Mr Thorpe upheld the examiner's objection to UK Patent application  GB1904713.3 for a Method of training a neural network to reflect emotional perception and re...

Lantana Ltd . ( "Lantana" ) is a California company that offers communication cable services, telephone systems and services and computer and data network services mainly to customers in Southern California . One of the company's employees invented a "method, systems, and computer program products for retrieving a file of machine readable data" for which Lantana applied for patents in the USA and around the world under the Patent Co-operation Treaty. The Invention  The invention is described in the abstract of the application as follows: "A user, wishing to retrieve a file of machine-readable data from a remote machine-readable data storage device, transmits a first e-mail message from a local station to a remote station via a packet switched network. The first e-mail message includes a first machine-readable instruction and a first machine-readable retrieval criterion. The remote station receives the first e-mail message from the packet ...

It is some years since I last discussed software patents ( "Software Patents: January Patents Ltd.'s Application" , 16 Jan 2009, "Software Patents: New Guidance from the IPO" , 29 Dec 2008 and "Patents: Software Protection after Symbian and Bilski " 11 Nov 2008) and Judge Birss QC's decision in Re Halliburton Energy Services Inc [2011] EWHC 2508 (Pat) (5 Oct 2011) and Mr. Justice Floyd's in Re Protecting Kids the World Over (PKTWO) Ltd [2011] EWHC 2720 (Pat) (26 Oct 2011) justify a return to the topic. The Statutory Exclusion Most people in intellectual property and many in information technology know that a rt 52 (2) of the European Patent Convention and s.1 (2) of the Patents Act 1977 exclude from patentability: (a) discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods; (b) aesthetic creations; (c) schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers; ...