Software Patents: January Patents Limited's Application
As I have to present a talk for our seminar on Software Patents after Symbian and Bilski in Liverpool on 5 Feb 2009 I thought I would have a look at the Comptroller's decisions since Symbian Ltd v Comptroller-General [2008] EWCA Civ 1066 to see whether there had been any change in the Office's approach to software and business method patents since the CA's decision. The official line from the IP O is that this case has not made much difference. In "Applying the Aerotel/Macrossan Test" the Office revisited four cases that had been decided before Symbian an d concluded that they would have been decided in exactly the same way now. And yet I wonder. Only one case has come before an hearing officer since Symbian and that was a win for the applicant. In January Patent Ltd.'s application the invention was a combined electronic point of sale device for buying credits for mobile telephones. The examiner had rejected the application on the grounds that the...