Case law: clarifying the criteria for patentability of inventions

Businesses will welcome a recent decision of the Court of Appeal, which gives a clear indication of the principles on which patent disputes will be resolved.

The Court of Appeal decision related to two separate cases, in which the business ideas were deemed not to be 'inventions' and were therefore unpatentable. In allowing one of the appeals and dismissing the other, the Court considered the entire range of relevant case law, and formulated a four-step approach to resolving such disputes.

While the area of patents inevitably remains a complex one, and businesses are urged to take advice, encouragement should be drawn from this case that the principles for defining patents have been simplified.

The Patent Office has issued a practice note which states that the Court of Appeal decision will be used as a benchmark for all future disputes over the patentability of inventions, particularly software, with the result that it should rarely be necessary to refer back to previous UK or European case law.

Immediate

Read the practice note on the Patent Office website
See the relevant pages on theHome Office website