Acres Gaming Incorporated (Patent): IPO 11 Jul 2007

It was known for casinos to issue their own identification cards for use by players of gaming machines, but the invention allowed information to be read from a pre-existing card such as a driver’s licence or credit card and used, without decrypting it, to identify whether the player had an account. The claims related to methods and apparatus for selecting a pre-existing account or establishing a new account, and to computer programs which instructed a computer to perform such methods. The hearing officer refused the application for lack of patentability.
Thus, notwithstanding a prior US specification disclosing the use of a pre-existing card but whose information required decryption in order to be used, the hearing officer (applying the Aerotel/Macrossan test) did not consider the contribution to lie solely in the use of non-decrypted information irrespective of its source, but thought it relied also on a recognition that encrypted information on a pre-existing card could be used in this way. He therefore held the contribution to relate solely to a computer program only in the case of the program claims, and held it to relate solely to a business method in the case of the method and apparatus claims.
On inventive step, the examiner had drawn a close parallel between the invention and known systems for identifying account holders in databases (eg using dates of birth, randomly generated account numbers or e-mail addresses). However the hearing officer did not consider this sufficed to show lack of inventive step.

Judges:

Mr R C Kennell

Citations:

[2007] UKIntelP o19207, GB 0311200.0

Links:

Bailii

Statutes:

Patents Act 1977 1(1) 1(2)

Cited by:

Appeal fromIn re IGT / Acres Gaming Inc PatC 19-Mar-2008
The court was asked: ‘When a claim defines an invention partly by reference to excluded subject-matter e.g. a business method, how do you search the prior art?’ The company appealed against rejection of its request for a patent. . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Intellectual Property

Updated: 20 October 2022; Ref: scu.456707