Patents: The Macrossan Aftermath
Not long after the Court of Appeal's decision in Aerote l Ltd. v Telco Holdings Ltd and Others (Macrossan) [2005] EWCA Civ 1371 (27 Oct 2006) the Patent Office published a practice notice on patentable subject matter which replaced a whole series of previous notices on the topic going back to 1999 and modified others on games and business method patents. Paragraph 5 of that notice propounded the 4 step test that the the Court had approved in Macrossan : (1) properly construe the claim, (2) identify the actual contribution, (3) ask whether it falls solely within the excluded subject matter and (4) check whether the actual or alleged contribution is actually technical in nature. Since the Court of Appeal's decision and subsequent practice notice there has been a wealth of excluded matter hearings in the Patent Office in which that test has been applied: 11 Dec 2006 John Lahiri Khan 11 Dec 2006 Rockwell Firstpoint Contact 29 Dec 2006 Nintendo 8 Jan 2007 Consolidated Global Fun U...