UK Patent Office To Get Tough On Business Method Patents

by Robin Pilgrim, for LawAndTax-News.com, London

01 December 2004

In a statement issued late last month, the UK Patent Office announced that it is introducing more stringent rules in an attempt to clamp down on the increasing number of business method patents that are being filed which contain no new technical contribution or innovation to the process.

Writing with regard to the plans to invite applicants to hearings at an early stage with a view to referring the matter to a hearing officer if the patent appears ungrantable, and to allow hearing officers to give shorter responses by referring back to previous rulings, director of patents, Sean Dennehey explained that:

"We are receiving an increasing number of patent applications relating to methods of doing business that are inherently unpatentable. In the usual course of events, at the examination stage there are several exchanges of correspondence between the examiner and the applicant, as the applicant makes successive attempts to rephrase the claims in the hope of coming up with some that are patentable and/or deal with other, less-important issues that have been raised. Only when the end of the rule 34 period is imminent is a hearing appointed, normally at short notice."

"The Hearing Officer then issues a lengthy decision, going carefully through all the arguments advanced. Often, these arguments are very similar to those that have been advanced in many other cases. We have come to the conclusion that this is not an efficient and sensible use of our resources, nor is it a sensible procedure from the applicant's perspective as it simply increases costs for no real benefit. Accordingly, we are making two changes to the way we handle business method applications for which the examiner considers there is very little, or no, prospect of grant because the invention is inherently unpatentable."

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