UK Intellectual Property Office takes a more liberal approach to computer-implemented inventions
1/04/2009

The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has now updated its Practice Notice on computer-implemented inventions following a decision in the Court of Appeal in the Symbian case, which now makes it easier to obtain patent protection for such inventions in the UK.

The UK IPO states that this new Practice Notice should be read in conjunction with two earlier Practice Notices, one following the decision in the Macrossan/Aerotel case in the Court of Appeal, and the other following the decision in the Astron Clinica case in the Patents Court. The Macrossan/Aerotel case introduced a four-step test for determining patentable subject matter in the UK. However, the IPO applied this test in such a manner that it became difficult to obtain patent protection for computer programs in the UK.

The new Practice Notice states that the IPO will not discard this test, however, where the test requires that the invention should ‘solve a technical problem’, it will receive a more liberal interpretation.

It appears that the IPO may, in future, recognise an invention as being patentable even if the problem is solely addressed in programming. However, the mere use of a computer to implement an invention would not necessarily be enough of a ‘technical contribution’ to render the invention patentable.

This recent development is not only good news for inventors and companies wishing to obtain patent protection for their computer-implemented inventions in the UK, but also for South Africans, since our Courts have in the past been inclined to adopt a similar approach to that of UK Courts.
Danie Pienaar
Candidate Attorney
danie-p@adamsadams.co.za
Adams & Adams