Case:

O/174/14

Claimed Subject Matter:

The alleged invention relates to a computer system and method for executing a point of sale transaction. In particular, the invention provides a point of sale terminal which is capable of receiving first price data from at least one item purchased by a customer and a server which receives both transaction data from the point of sale terminal and second price data pertaining to comparable competitor items from an update server so that the first and second price data can be compared and a voucher issued based on the comparison.

[This appears to be a patent application directed to Sainsbury’s Brand Match feature.]

Comments:

The Hearing Officer found that the actual contribution of the invention related entirely to a method of doing business which, as it was brought about by a computer program, also related to a computer program, as such. The invention was therefore excluded by section 1(2) and the application was refused.

Section 22 shows the risk of using an argument that is not present in the specification; the Hearing Office was sceptical of an argument based around quality control / self-checking that appeared to have little basis in the application as filed. As we have seen with many Europe cases, basing an argument on advantages not described in the patent application rarely succeed.

The Applicant attempted to argue that a technical contribution lay in “the overall architecture of  the computer system with technical components which in themselves are known but connected in a different way” . However, on applying step 3 of the Aerotel/Macrossan test the Hearing Officer was firmly of the view that “the actual contribution relates entirely to a way of conducting business” (see 27). This is because the actual contribution was deemed to be “about: (i) comparing prices, which manifestly is a business issue, and (ii) issuing a voucher with “value” information on it, which is also wholly a business issue”.

Section 29 has useful comments on whether the computer program exclusion is avoided. It was argued that “it is the connectivity of the components of hardware that creates the overall architecture of the invention” and that the computer program “lies in the middle of the system” but does not make up the whole system. This was found to be initially persuasive. However, the Hearing Officer concluded that the ” connectivity is necessarily brought about by a computer program” and that therefore lies “entirely in the programming itself”.