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:
Statutes:
Cited by:
Appeal from – In 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
