A Win for Functional Claim Drafting - Openfield

Defining an invention solely in terms of a result to be achieved (colloquially termed "free beer" claiming) is a risky business and something that tends to prompt objections both at the EPO and UK IPO. When training to become a UK patent attorney, in my experience it is quite usual to practice drafting claim 1 using a combination of a few relevant structural features, something to define their relationship, and ending with some functional wording that defines what the purpose or result is. The functional type wording should ideally reveal or define the 'clever bit', i.e. the feature that would distinguish the claimed invention from whatever prior art turns out to be the closest. This doesn't always work though, because an examiner can find a closer piece of prior art than was known to the inventor at the time. However, when it does work it can result in a broader and potentially more useful patent claim. 

Because functional claiming can raise objections, it is always a good idea to provide clear fallback positions to more definite features so that the result to be achieved can instead be defined in terms of how the result is achieved if this becomes needed during prosecution. Examiners will often insist on this, particularly at the EPO (see e.g. F-IV 4.10 of the Guidelines for Examination). In the UK, functional claiming tends to be slightly more acceptable, being allowable so long as the specification provides "enough instruction for the skilled person to be able to achieve the desired result without embarking on a research programme" (MPP 14.72). It is therefore fairly common for UK drafted patent applications to have more free beer than applications drafted from a more continental perspective . However, given that the EPO is now considered the usual standard to aim for, it may be less common than it used to be. Examiners at the UK IPO, being more aware of practice emanating from the EPO, may also tend to look upon functional claiming less favourably than they might have done in the past. The practice remains common, particularly among the older elements of the UK patent profession. 

All that is an introduction to a recent decision (BL O/0369/26: Openfield) from the UK IPO regarding a UK patent application (GB2306083.3) defining an invention claimed partly in functional terms, and in which the functional part was the supposedly clever bit that distinguished it over the prior art. The latest version of claim 1 of the application reads as follows:

The claim defined a well logging tool of the type illustrated below (Figure 1 of the application), in which an articulated twin arm deployment arrangement would deploy by the arms hinging and extending away from the cylindrical body of the tool so that they then spanned the horizontal well bore. This enabled capacitive sensors along one of the arms to be positioned along the diameter of the bore to sense a level of water within the bore. The clever bit of the invention was to keep the capacitive sensors vertical as the arms were deployed, all other components of the claimed invention being already known. This bit, as shown in the highlighted part of claim 1 above, was defined purely in functional terms,  i.e. without actually defining how the capacitance sensors were kept vertically aligned. 

The examiner objected that the way the invention was claimed was unclear because it was defined by a result to be achieved and there was only one way the description showed how this would be done, which was by way of a pantographic mechanism (basically two hinged parallel bars). The claimed invention, in the examiner's view, was therefore not enabled across its whole scope (Biogen insufficiency, referring also to Novartis). The applicant's representative argued against this but didn't  manage to win the examiner over, resulting in the case coming before a hearing officer. 

The applicant's representative then argued before the hearing officer that there were other mechanisms discussed in the patent application, referring to the use of accelerometers, counterweights and pivots that could be used to keep the sensor elements vertical. While these were not actually disclosed in the application itself, the representative showed how such alternative mechanisms could work, referring to other patents and prior art documents. This appeared to persuade the hearing officer, who found that, while the specification defined only a single embodiment, the skilled person would be aware of various ways of implementing a mechanism to do the same thing. The skilled person would therefore be able to perform the invention over the whole scope of the claim without undue burden or effort, using their common general knowledge. The claims did not therefore need to be restricted to only the use of a pantographic mechanism. 

The lesson from this appears to be that, at least before the UK IPO, it is possible to impart common general knowledge to the skilled person by referencing material outside of the patent application itself. This does, however, appear to be a risky move because the more the skilled person is deemed to know, the less likely the claimed invention will be considered to be inventive. Indeed, the application has now been remitted to the examiner to consider the question of inventive step. Perhaps the applicant will manage to carefully tread the line between sufficiency on the one side and inventive step on the other but it looks to me like it could now go either way on inventive step.

Another problem with dates

Working in patent practice requires, among other things, a keen eye for due dates. Getting a due date wrong by just one day can make a big difference. This can sometimes make all the difference for a patent application, as a recent example I wrote about here demonstrated. There are many other instances of critical due dates under the UK Patents Act and Rules where it is very important to know when a particular period ends. 

I wrote a long while ago about a decision from the UK IPO (Rigcool v Optima Solutions), in which the issue was about how to calculate the end of "a period of two years beginning with the date of grant" under Section 37(5) (as it was then worded), in relation to when proceedings for entitlement could be commenced for a granted patent. Did the period end on the day of the anniversary of grant or the day before? Following reasoning derived from how the term of a patent under Section 20 is calculated, this was determined to be the latter, i.e. the last day on which entitlement proceedings could be initiated was the day before the anniversary. This turned out to be very important in the case in question, since the claimant had filed on the anniversary of the date of grant, which was determined on this basis to be one day too late. 

Following that case, some amendments were made to the Patents Act and Rules by The Patents (Amendment) Rules 2011 (SI 2011 No. 2052) and the Intellectual Property Act 2014, which adjusted the wording used in various places in the Rules and Act respectively to clarify that any periods specified were supposed to end on the anniversary and not the day before. One example in the Rules was the period under Rule 32 for making a request for reinstatement of an application. This was one of the periods that was previously specified as being "beginning with", which was then changed to "beginning immediately after". The relevant period under Rule 32 was then defined as "twelve months beginning immediately after the date on which the application was terminated". The situation was then made clear that the period would end on the anniversary and not the day before. Or so we may have thought. 

In a recent judgment from the High Court in Ahmad v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2025] EWHC 936 (Pat), Mr Justice Mellor decided on an appeal by the claimant Mr Ahmad in relation to his patent application, which had been refused by the UK IPO in 2021. Mr Ahmad made various accusations and complaints about being badly treated by the UK IPO, accusing the Office of "malicious comments that are illegal and against all the guidelines with lots of fraud", among other things. It was fairly clear that Mr Ahmad, who was self-represented, was not particularly familiar with the usual way of prosecuting patent applications in the UK and was somewhat chaotic and unreasonable in his dealings with the UK IPO. Faced with Mr Ahmad's numerous failings and utterly hopeless arguments, Mellor J had no difficulty in striking out his claim by summary judgment, finding Mr Ahmad's claims to be totally without merit. One of the points raised was whether Mr Ahmad could have requested reinstatement of his application, which he failed to do. This was certainly not a deciding factor in the case, but Mellor J noted what the due date for making such a request would have been, calculating it in the following way: 

"The termination of the application was effective on 31 August 2021 (one day after the two month extension window elapsed following 30 June 2021). By operation of r. 32 (under s.20A) the applicant is then given a generous, but fixed, deadline within which to seek reinstatement. In Mr Ahmad's case, it was a deadline of 31 August 2022: twelve months after the application was terminated on 30 August 2021. That period is set by r. 32(1) and –(2) PR07, and is not extendable: see r. 108(1) PR07 and its Sch. 4 Part 1" (paragraph 50, emphasis in the original).

The letter from the UK IPO that started the period for requesting reinstatement referred to the application not being in order for grant on 30 August 2021, indicating that it was treated as having been refused on that date. The period under Rule 32(2) was therefore defined based on this date, being the date on which the application was terminated. Mellor J calculated, however, that the final date on which a request for reinstatement could be made would be 31 August 2022. Given all the history behind why the particular wording of Rule 32(2) as it now stands was arrived at, this seems to be wrong. The correct due date should actually have been 30 August 2022. It made no difference in that case but it is slightly concerning that a High Court judge can get this wrong. Perhaps the wording currently used is not as clear as we might think. 

A problem with dates

Knowing when a divisional application (or, more correctly, a new application under section 15(9)) can be filed is a tricky business in the UK. I have written previously here about how applicants and their representatives can sometimes get caught out by assuming that the same rules apply to those at the EPO. Unlike at the EPO, where the general rule is that a divisional can be filed provided there is a current application pending, in the UK the latest date for filing a divisional is 3 months before the end of the compliance period, provided the application is still pending. This additional requirement can cause problems when applications are still being prosecuted close to the end of the compliance period, especially if it's not yet clear what will get allowed. 

According to Rule 30, the compliance period is 4 years and 6 months from the filing or priority date, or 12 months from the date of the first substantive examination report if this is later. The end of the period can be extended by 2 months under Rule 108 without providing any reasons, and may be extended further if evidence is provided. This means that, if the end of the compliance period is getting closer than 3 months, a divisional can still be filed if an extension request is filed in time. 

Let's say we are exactly one month away from the end of the compliance period, which for the sake of this example is 30 December 2024. Can we still file a divisional application? The current date is 30 November 2024, which is a Saturday. We have unfortunately left this rather late, as we knew a while back that a divisional application would be needed. As a busy patent attorney, however, we are used to dealing with things at the last minute and we are sure that all will be fine because we can just file a request for a 2 month extension at the same time as filing the divisional application and all will be in order. 

Unfortunately, things will not be in order. A further quirk of the UK patent system is that dates on which things are deemed to be filed differ depending on what they are and whether the Office is open. For the purposes of most things the Office is closed at the weekend, meaning that anything filed gets a deemed date of the next working day (see here). This applies to everything apart from new applications that do not claim priority, which get the filing date of the day on which they are actually filed, regardless of whether the Office is open. 

The upshot of all this is that the divisional application we filed on 30 November (which did not claim priority) gets that date of filing but the extension request we filed at the same time gets a deemed filing date of 2 December. The result is that the divisional was filed out of time because on the date of filing it was within only 1 month of the end of the compliance period. The only way to rescue this would be to get a further discretionary extension to the compliance period to allow another purported divisional application to be filed within time, but we would have to adequately explain what happened and why this would be justified. 

This all sounds very implausible and not something that should happen in the real world. Any competent patent attorney with a reliable docketing system will be warned in good time beforehand about the upcoming deadline for filing any divisional and will not resort to the risky business of filing things on a Saturday evening. This is not, however, a theoretical example but actually happened. The full details can be found in a recent decision from the UK IPO in BL O/0308/25. To prevent further embarrassment to the patent attorney involved, I will not go into any more detail. It is, however, highly recommended reading for all UK patent attorneys, and especially for those involved in marking papers for the patent attorney examinations. 

Use Your Imagination

I get quite tired of reading decisions from the UK IPO each month on section 1(2), largely because there are so many of them and they tend to follow the same basic structure, which is:

1. Examiner objects that the invention is excluded as a computer program / business method / mathematical method etc.
2. Applicant ('s attorney) disagrees and argues, often making inconsequential technical sounding amendments.
3. Hearing officer follows the usual route of assessing the invention with the Aerotel 4-step test and AT&T/CVON 'signposts' (see here for more about a technical effect, which has not really changed since 2013 at least).
4. None of the signposts indicate the presence of a relevant technical contribution.
5. Application is refused. 

The stream of applications following this route and being refused as a result has been pretty steady for the past few years, with usually a handful each month. Occasionally there will be a different result, where the applicant has managed to pull out a technical effect that persuades the hearing officer there is something there after all, but these are few and far between and do not affect the general procedure of how borderline cases are assessed. Every so often though, there is one that bucks the trend and comes up with something potentially interesting. There was one last month that I thought interesting enough to comment on, which related to applications in the name of Imagination Technologies Limited (BL O/420/21). 

The applications (there are several) related to a data processing system for determining median values for a stream of data, in which intermediate values were used to allow values already calculated to be used in calculating a subsequent median value, somewhat similar to calculating a rolling average. The applicant had already managed to get one application granted (GB2587590B) to this way of calculating median values for a data stream that was specified as being audio samples of an audio signal or signal samples of a transmitted signal. They also, however, filed three divisional applications to versions of a more general system that was not specifically linked to what the data represented. The difference was in how the invention was claimed, in that the divisional claims included much more specific detail about the system being embodied in hardware on an integrated circuit. The extent of disclosure in the applications of the type of hardware used was limited to the (fairly usual) way of representing hardware, the most detailed one being in Figure 7, shown below. 

The examiner had objected that the way the invention was claimed did not make any difference, and considered that the invention was not allowable because the type of data stream was not specified and the claims had not therefore been 'tethered' to the real world. This, of course, brings to mind the well-established case law dating back to Vicom (T 208/84) at the EPO, which is still being followed at the EPO and UK IPO. According to this case law, provided the data being processed relates to something technical, for example an image (in the case of Vicom), it is possible to be patentable if the method is new and inventive. If this is the case, it does not matter what form the invention is claimed, and claims to computer programs themselves, in whatever form, are also allowable provided they have this 'further technical effect'. Following this principle, it should be clear that it would not make an invention patentable just by specifying that it is embodied on hardware. The Court of Appeal decision in Gale's Application [1991] RPC 305 makes this clear in the UK too. 

In this case, the applicant argued that the invention was technical because it was specifically embodied in hardware and was not therefore a computer program or a mathematical method as such. The hearing officer tended to agree with this and thought that the application did point towards a hardware implementation, largely because the claimed inventions referred to "fixed function circuitry" and "dedicated hardware", which in the hearing officer's view meant the same thing. The invention had therefore to be construed as a piece of hardware and not a computer program. 

On the mathematical method question, the situation was complicated by Gale's Application, in which a ROM was programmed to perform an improved square root calculation method. Substance should rule over form, according to the Court of Appeal, and this could not be enough to escape the exclusion. Nevertheless, the hearing officer agreed with the applicant that, because the invention was in "fixed function circuitry", its implementation was not conventional and was not simply a generic ROM including programmed instructions. This was enough to distinguish it from Gale. This got the application over the line and the remaining steps in Aerotel and AT&T/CVON were passed, resulting in the claimed inventions being allowable. 

There was, however, a twist in the tale. Before sending the applications back to the examiner to get them allowed, the hearing officer noticed that there were still claims in the applications directed to a computer program that would cause the integrated circuit to carry out the claimed method. Rather than finding that this would entirely contradict the applicant's arguments that the way the invention was implemented was specifically on dedicated hardware and not on a computer program, the hearing officer instead simply stated that these claims had to be deleted. 

This is only a decision of a hearing officer at the UK IPO and therefore not precedential. Further decisions may well disagree with it. It does, however, suggest that applications directed to what are in reality mathematical methods embodied on software could be patentable in the UK if they are described as being specifically implemented on hardware. This tends to go against everything that I have seen on this subject since I first started looking, but I expect there will now be others that will want to have a go at the same kind of arguments. Let's see how that works out.

Corrections and Conflicts of Interest

Rule 7 of the IPReg Rules of Conduct, which applies to Chartered Patent Attorneys in the UK, states (in part) that "A regulated person must not act where his interests conflict with those of a client or of a former client". There is a proviso that allows such a conflict to continue, provided "all of the parties have given their informed consent in writing", but a regulated person "must, however, refuse to act on behalf of conflicting or potentially conflicting parties in contentious matters, in circumstances where the regulated person's actions would not be seen to be neutral or where accepting instructions from both parties would risk a breach of Rule 5 [carrying out professional work in a timely manner and with proper regard for standards of professional service and client care] or Rule 8 [keeping the affairs of clients and former clients confidential] cannot be observed".

Bearing the above in mind, I will set out a possible situation. Let's say you are a patent attorney doing a typical task of engaging a new client (Mr S), who wants to get a UK patent application prepared and filed. You work with Mr S and get the application prepared and filed in November 2017, filing it in his name without paying any fees. So far so good. All seems to be in order, and you wait until near the time for sorting the fees out by the first anniversary. However, ten months afterwards in September 2018 you find out that your client has decided to engage the services of a different patent attorney by filing a Form 51 himself. While unusual, this is not unheard of and Mr S is perfectly within his rights. You then, for the avoidance of doubt, on 17 September 2018 confirm to the UK IPO that you withdraw your representation. Normally that would be an end of it as far as you are concerned. While you might be disappointed to lose your client to a bigger firm of patent attorneys, there is nothing you can do about it. However, shortly after withdrawing your representation you are contacted by Mr H, who says that he worked with Mr S in developing the invention you prepared and filed the patent application for. Mr H is in an ongoing dispute with Mr S about the invention and the company Mr S has set up to commercialise it, and there is a disagreement about who should be named as inventor and applicant on the application. Mr H seeks your advice on what you can do to help him with this, now that you no longer represent Mr S.

At this point, even without having to consult the IPReg Rules of Conduct, you should of course inform Mr H that you unfortunately cannot act for him because this would conflict with the interests of Mr S, your former client and doing so would be against the rules. You advise Mr H that there are plenty of other patent attorneys he can choose from, pointing him in the direction of the register of patent attorneys on the IPReg website. Although unhappy not to be able to engage your services because you already have a good knowledge of the invention, Mr H would then go off to engage someone else and you can then get on with other less contentious things. 

However, this is not what actually happens. Instead, three days after confirming your withdrawal of representation to the UK IPO, you write to the IPO seeking a correction under Section 117 to the applicant, which you had previously identified as Mr S on filing the application, asking that Mr H is also named as applicant and inventor. After some head-scratching, the IPO informs the new representative about the request for correction. Unsurprisingly, the new representative objects and the IPO then decides to refuse the request, suggesting that a reference under Section 8 (entitlement) should be filed to resolve any dispute over who should be identified as inventor and applicant. You nevertheless persist in arguing that a correction under Section 117 should be allowed. The new representative, of course, disagrees and the dispute eventually results in a hearing being held to resolve the issue. In the view of the hearing officer, Section 117 cannot be used to circumvent the more specific legal provisions of Sections 8 and 13, in line with the well known principle generalia specialibus non derogant (the general cannot overrule the specific). You argue that you knew that Mr H was a co-inventor at the time of filing the application but failed to enter his name in error. The hearing officer, however, does not believe you because the error was not the result of a single isolated oversight on Form 1 but also involved stating that all the applicants were inventors and that there were no other inventors. In other words, in the hearing officer's view, you positively affirmed that there were no other inventors when filing the application, making the possibility of this being an error very unlikely. The error was also not noticed until nearly a year afterwards, and only shortly after you withdrew your representation. The hearing officer, unsurprisingly, refuses your request for correction. 

What I am wondering about now is not whether the decision to refuse the correction was correct, as it was clearly a complete non-starter, but instead what position you, as a regulated patent attorney, are now in. Have you acted in accordance with the Rules of Conduct? If not, what should happen? As you might have guessed by now, the situation is not hypothetical but actually happened*. The case can be easily found by those who know where to look.

*UPDATE 17/9/20: Based on information I have received since the above post was published, the hypothetical case could have been slightly different to how I have put it, although given that the actual details are not on the public record it not possible to tell. Let's suppose instead that you were acting for both Mr H and Mr S originally, being instructed principally by Mr S. After the application was filed, Mr S got involved in a dispute with Mr H and, being named as sole applicant, took the patent application with him to the new representative. Does this alter the conclusion about whether there was a conflict?

UPDATE 18/9/20: Following several discussions about how the scenario might possibly be interpreted as not resulting in a conflict, one possibility raised is that your client was originally, and continued to be, Mr H. It might then be argued that continuing to represent Mr H would not be a conflict, since he was always your client and he was the one who paid the bills, while Mr S was only the inventor and applicant. This would require Rule 7 to be interpreted to exclude Mr S from being your client, thereby excluding you from being conflicted. Unfortunately for you, this runs against the definition of "client" provided in Rule 1, which is given as "the principal on whose behalf a regulated person acts as agent and includes any person for whom the regulated person is address for service for any right regardless of the nature of any current relationship". Mr S was the named applicant and you were identified as the address for service in communications from the IPO before Mr S took representation elsewhere. Mr S was therefore a client within the meaning of the rules, becoming a former client afterwards, whether or not Mr H was as well. I wonder if anyone can think of a plausible way around this. 

A Patent for a Hairdressing Salon in a Shipping Container - Really?

A while ago I wrote about a patent that was granted by the EPO in August 2016 which, it seemed to me, should not have been granted because it was clearly invalid. The patent, EP2700769B1, claimed the following:

1. A hairdressing salon (1) comprising at least one styling station (3), which is embodied in a room (5), wherein the room (5) is arranged in a mobile structure (7), which can be displaced by means of a lifting tool, characterized in that the mobile structure (7) has at least one window (13).

A South African barbershop,
in a repurposed shipping container.

Anyone remotely familiar with patents would immediately recognise that the claim, which effectively defines a hairdressing salon in a shipping container, would have fairly obvious validity issues. Even if nobody had thought to repurpose a shipping container in this way before (which on the face of it sounds implausible), there would be a question to be asked about what particular technical problem the invention solved that was not obvious. The claim therefore seemed, even before doing any kind of search, either not novel or lacking inventive step. How it got through the EPO's examination system, with the examiner not really finding anything of relevance and then allowing the application on the basis of the characterising clause being to add a window, is a mystery (at least to me), and is unfortunately something we will probably never find out.

As I wrote in my previous post about the patent, I did a quick search for prior art (taking no longer then 5 minutes) and found something that seemed to me good enough to knock out at least claim 1 for lack of novelty. The prior art I found is available here, from which I have copied the most relevant photograph. The webpage refers to a book that was published in 2011, which has all the photographs in. There was therefore no doubt that the photograph, described on the webpage as a "Boyz & Girlz Salon (in a shipping container)", was available before the August 2012 priority date of the patent.

Being a bit annoyed that something so obviously invalid could get through the EPO's supposedly high quality examination system, and also a bit of a fan of the UK IPO's opinions service, I thought I would have a go at seeing what a UK examiner thought of the patent. After waiting for the opposition period to expire (I wasn't going to file an opposition, given the high fee and the long wait for a result), I prepared and filed a quick request for an opinion on validity at the UK IPO, using selections from the book as my prior art.

A couple of days ago, just short of the usual 3 month timescale after filing the request, the opinion issued. In brief, the examiner agreed with me on every point and found all of the claims to be invalid, either for lack of novelty (as in claim 1) or lack of inventive step. The only claims that were found to be novel were those that added a staircase to access the walk-on roof (claims 7 & 8), which were unsurprisingly found to be lacking in inventiveness. As a result, the patent was found to be entirely invalid.

It is a little disappointing that the patent proprietor decided not to file any observations in reply to the request, but since they had failed to pay the latest renewal fee it seemed they might have already lost interest in it, or had perhaps discovered after getting it granted that it didn't stand much chance of surviving any attacks. The request did provoke observations from another quarter though, from someone calling themselves "The Patent Labrador". Unfortunately, these observations could not be taken into account by the examiner as they raised new issues that were not mentioned in the request, although they were mentioned in the opinion as having been filed, by "an anonymous observer". Perhaps the Labrador needs to have a look at Rule 96 before having another go.

Along with proving a point that was previously only made by me in a fairly obscure and esoteric blog, this little exercise has shown how easy, and potentially quite powerful, it can be to get something on the public record relating to an invalid patent that would make anyone wanting to enforce it think very hard before doing so.

Regular readers of this blog will, of course, already know that this is not necessarily the end of the story. The next step the UK IPO can take is to initiate revocation proceedings under section 73(1A), provided they agree with the examiner that the case is sufficiently clear cut. If, as I suspect, the proprietor does not contest the opinion, my guess is that this patent will, in due course, be got rid of in the UK and will, in effect, never have been granted, which is of course what should have happened in the first place.

Virgin v Premium - yet another chapter

The dispute between Virgin Atlantic Airways and Premium Aircraft Interiors has been rattling along for a while now, and has been keeping various patent attorneys, solicitors, barristers and bloggers quite busy.  Other chapters of the story involve decisions from the High Court and the Court of Appeal (a good starting point if you are interested in finding out more is this IPKat post), as well as proceedings before the EPO.  Even the Supreme Court will apparently be having a go at the matter, having granted Premium leave to appeal earlier this year.

The story relates to European patent EP1495908 concerning an aircraft seating system (right).  The patent was granted in 2007 to Virgin and designated the UK, along with various other European countries. The patent was opposed by Cathay Pacific, Airbus and Premium. The patent survived the opposition and subsequent appeal proceedings, although in an amended form. A decision to maintain the patent as amended was issued yesterday following the decision by the appeal board in T 1259/09, and a B2 publication is due to appear soon.

One argument raised by the opponents during the EPO proceedings was that the European patent should not have been granted with a GB designation, because the request for grant included the following statement (click for a larger version):

The examining division had nevertheless allowed the application to proceed to grant with the GB designation intact.  Both the opposition division and the appeal board concluded that there was nothing they could do, since the ability to correct any such errors was only in the remit of the examining division, and since Premium was not a party to the proceedings before the examining division and not entitled to appeal.  The GB designation therefore stood. There was nothing further the opponents could do, so the only options left for them was to fight the patent in each country, which at least Premium continues to do.

Premium have now had another go at trying to get the GB designation removed, this time through the unusual step of applying for a correction under Rule 50 of the UK Patents Rules 2007.  A decision relating to this request, which resulted in a hearing at the IPO, has now been issued: BL O/281/11.  Premium argued that, since the UK was expressly excluded as a designated state by the applicant, no European patent (UK) ever existed and therefore the UK register should be corrected to reflect this.  According to Premium, nothing that Virgin or the EPO did subsequently could change the fact that there had never been a GB designation, and any suggestion that there was an EP(UK) was an error that should be corrected insofar as it appeared on the UK register.  They put forward the case of Arrow v Merck [2007] EWHC 1900 (Pat) in support of their argument, as this related to a correction being made to remove a GB designation following grant by the EPO. However, as the hearing officer noted, in that case the EPO had realised there had been a mistake and issued a corrigendum afterwards.

The hearing office pointed out that the difference in this case was that the EPO had not considered there was anything it could or would do, even if it considered that there had been a mistake.  For the comptroller to come to a conclusion that any error had been made that could then be corrected, it would be necessary to look afresh at the facts considered previously by the EPO examining division and effectively come to a view on the validity of what had been done.  This would, the hearing officer considered, amount to a review of a determination by the EPO which, particularly in the context of an ex parte request for correction of the register, was not open to him. In contrast to the provisions governing revocation on patentability grounds, the comptroller had been given no power to review decisions made by the EPO, and the hearing officer could not see how he could have any sort of power to do so under the UK Act and Rules. Because there was no basis on which a correction could be made, the request was refused.

Free beer and covert viewing

When an invention is defined in a claim in terms of a result to be achieved, it is often termed a 'free beer' claim, in the sense that the invention would be a good thing but the claim does not define how it is actually achieved.  When the patent specification as a whole does describe at least one way of achieving the result, the problem is one of a lack of clarity, rather than sufficiency, and can be resolved by amending the claims so that they define something the applicant has contributed to the art rather than a mere wish list of features.  At the European patent office, any free beer is typically objected to (even during Oktoberfest), and examiners will tend to require more technical features to be imported.  At the UK patent office, however, at least small amounts of free beer are more typically allowable, usually as part of a functional statement at the end of a claim, although in some cases more extensive functional language can be allowed.  Too much, however, and a UK examiner will object on grounds of lack of clarity. This was the case for application GB0904563.4 (previously published as WO 2008/035107), which has led to to the recent decision BL O/243/11, the applicant being The Secretary of State for Defence. Claim 1 of the application as-published read as follows:

1. A lens arrangement, suitable for looking through pinholes comprising a converging eyepiece type lens apparatus used without a conventional objective lens and arranged such that the lens arrangement projects a "virtual" aperture to a point in object space beyond a first end of the lens arrangement, said first end being the end of the lens arrangement closest to the subject being viewed, such that the virtual aperture limits the pencil of rays passing into the lens arrangement, wherein the lens arrangement contains no integral physical lens stop.

There are a number of obvious problems with this claim, one of which is clarity.  Following rounds of correspondence with the examiner, the claim was amended to read:

1. A lens arrangement, adapted for looking through a remote pinhole comprising a plurality of lens elements designed and configured to operate without the presence of an integral physical lens stop, such that in use the lens arrangement defines a “virtual aperture” in a pre-determined plane in object space remote from a first end of the lens arrangement, said first end being the end of the lens arrangement closest to the subject being viewed, wherein the virtual aperture acts as a remote entrance pupil in object space beyond the first end of the lens arrangement and defines a pencil of rays that passes through the lens arrangement.

The examiner considered that, even after amendment, there was too much free beer in the claims. He maintained objections that the claimed invention was unclear and was not supported by the description because the claims defined the invention in terms of the result to be achieved (i.e. a stopless lens) rather than the technical features of the lens arrangement that achieved the result, and the embodiments described did not support such a broad claim. The applicant did not manage to overcome the objections, and the matter went before a hearing officer at the IPO.

Before the hearing officer the applicant argued that, following the decision in No-Fume v Frank Pitchford & Co. Ltd. 52 RPC 231, there were many ways the invention could be implemented and the claims should not need to be limited to only one set of specific parameters. According to the applicant, conventional thinking was that a physical lens stop would be required. The lens arrangement of the invention made this redundant through the creation of a virtual aperture in the object space of the arrangement. The hearing officer accepted that the meaning of the term "virtual aperture" was sufficiently clear, but then went on to point out that the application outlined the features of the invention as being equivalent to using a conventional converging telescope eyepiece in reverse (as for example in the above figure).

As a result, the apparatus claims did not define the invention sufficiently to avoid reading directly on to an already known telescope eyepiece. The fact that the claims indicated that the lens arrangement was adapted for looking through a remote pinhole only specified how the lens arrangement could be used in practice, but did not distinguish the arrangement over a conventional telescope eyepiece. Specifying that the arrangement was designed and configured to provide the desired effect would, following Kirin-Amgen, only be allowable if the product itself was novel and inventive. The claimed invention did not therefore meet the requirements of section 14(5)(a) and (b) in that it did not define the invention and was not clear.

Although the claims in the form discussed were not allowable, the hearing officer allowed the applicant another opportunity to submit further amendments by extending the compliance period. As of today, it looks (thanks to the IPO's Ipsum file inspection service) like the application is still not quite finished.

As far as I can see, the lesson to be learned is to be careful with relying on functional definitions unless you have plenty of backup definitions that are more grounded in technical features of the invention.  It is probably not enough to have a myriad differently defined specific embodiments unless you have some overarching technical definitions to tie at least some of them together because the only option you might end up with could be a single narrow one. It is easy with hindsight to see this being a problem; the clever trick is to spot it in advance.

Rigcool v Optima Solutions - some confusion over dates

How do you calculate a "period of two years beginning with the date of grant"? Does this period include the anniversary date of the date of grant or not? This was the essence of the recent case of Rigcool Limited v Optima Solutions Limited, which resulted in a pair of decisions issued on 5 May (BL O/149/11) and 1 June 2011 (BL O/182/11).  Following these decisions, the period may well not be what you previously thought it was.  This could have rather interesting (if not worrying) consequences for other periods specified in the UK Patents Act and Rules.

Applications were made by Rigcool (which was termed the pursuer because the hearing was held in Scotland by request of both parties) under sections 37 and 72 on 27 August 2010 in relation to a GB patent granted on 27 August 2008 to Optima (the defender). The issue to be decided was whether the applications had been filed out of time, because both sections specify a time limit of "the end of the period of two years beginning with the date of grant".

However, according to section 130(7), both sections were framed to have, as nearly as practicable, the same effects as Article 23.3 of the Community Patent Convention (CPC), which states that legal proceedings "may be instituted only within a period of not more than two years after the date of grant". The defender submitted that the two year period ended on the day before the second anniversary of grant, which would mean the applications were filed out of time. The pursuer did not disagree, but argued that the wording of the CPC should be worked from directly. The hearing officer agreed that, if the CPC were to be followed, the anniversary date would be included.

The pursuer argued that applying the CPC directly was consistent with Bristol Myers Squibb v Baker Norton Pharmaceuticals [1999] RPC 253, in which Jacob J (as he then was) stated that "save in the rare event of a specific contention that a provision of the 1977 Act has a different meaning from a corresponding provision of a Convention, it will be better [...] to work on the basis that the corresponding provisions of the Conventions are of direct effect" (paragraph 4). From this, however, the hearing officer considered that the case was in fact one of those rare events where the UK Act did have a different meaning from a corresponding provision in the CPC. The CPC did not therefore have direct effect.

Reference was also made to the judgment in Yeda Research and Development v Rhone-Poulenc Rorer International Holdings [2007] RPC 9, in which Jacob LJ stated that the court should construe section 37(5) to have the same meaning as the provision in the CPC about bringing entitlement more than 2 years after grant. In that case, however, the hearing officer noted that the argument was not about the precise start and end date of the two year period, and any difference did not appear to have been considered. The hearing officer therefore concluded that, once such a difference had been identified, the court must take a different view of the draftsman's re-writing. The wording of the Act should therefore be followed rather than the CPC in relation to the end date of the two year period. It followed that the pursuer's applications had been filed out of time, resulting in a need for the revocation action to be ruled inadmissible and no order being possible as a result of the entitlement proceedings.

The hearing officer allowed the parties to make further submissions on the question of whether, in this case, rule 107 should apply, i.e. whether the comptroller should extend the period by one day for the purpose of the proceedings. In the subsequent decision the hearing officer then considered whether the conditions for exercising discretion under rule 107 applied. According to the Court of Appeal in M's application [1985] RPC 249, the applicant had to show that the Office was guilty of an error, default or omission, that this had contributed to the failure to meet the time limit, and that the contribution played a significant part in the applicant's failure. The pursuer argued, in light of previous decisions by the Office and the Office's litigation manual and manual of patent practice, and the fact that practice in relation to trade marks had been revised in 2010 in relation to the same issue, that the Office had contributed to a general understanding that the period included the anniversary. The defender argued against the discretion being used, since there had been no error on the part of the Office and, as the manual of patent practice stated (MPP 123.10), the power should not be applied too readily but only in cases where it was warranted and only in accordance with the case law.

The hearing officer considered that the passages cited from the litigation manual and MPP did not support the pursuer's argument as much as they proposed, but neither did they support the defender's view, with the result that the manuals did not clearly point out that the second anniversary date was excluded. The hearing officer accepted that it had not been clearly Office practice to regard the second anniversary date as being outside the two year period. The Office had therefore contributed in part to the failure of the applications being filed out of time. The irregularity could therefore be rectified by extending the period by one day in the particular case. The hearing officer ordered accordingly.

It is fairly clear from this case that the IPO will need to revise their stated practice to indicate clearly that the two year period expires on the day before the anniversary date, so as to prevent this sort of thing happening again.  The issue does, however, seem to raise the fundamental question of whether the IPO have got their calculations right for other periods, because the same form of wording is used in several other places in the Act and Rules.  Here are a few examples:

• Section 2(4): 6 month period for a breach of confidence disclosure;
• Rule 30: the compliance period;
• Rule 12(3): provide name and address;
• Rule 12(9): file a translation into English (or Welsh);
• Rule 28(2): request substantive examination;
• Rule 32: request reinstatement;

If the IPO is correct in their interpretation of the 2 year period under Section 37(5), does this mean that the same interpretation should apply to all the other periods where the same wording is used?  If so, why does the IPO not follow this rule in practice (an example being the date given for requesting examination)? If not, how can the same wording be interpreted differently for different purposes? Alternatively, is the IPO wrong in their calculation of the 2 year period? Either way, something serious seems to be wrong and needs to be sorted out.

Update: Thanks to Filemot for pointing me to the trade marks tribunal practice notice that was referred to in the first of these decisions. This states in part:

"4. The term 'beginning with' requires that the publication date be included in the calculation of the opposition period (as opposed to periods starting ‘from’ where the day of the initiating event is excluded from the calculation). Explanations of the interpretation of wording in respect of time periods can be found in Trow v Ind. Coope (West Midlands) Ltd CA [1967] 2 QB 899 and Zoan v Rouamba [2000] 2 All ER 620, at paragraph 24.

5. According to the Interpretation Act 1978 a month means a calendar month. It appears from Halsbury's Laws of England that:

"When the period prescribed is a calendar month running from any arbitrary date the period expires with the day in the succeeding month immediately preceding the day corresponding to the date upon which the period starts: save that, if the period starts at the end of a calendar month which contains more days than the next succeeding month, the period expires at the end of the latter month."

6. Consequently, where an opposition is made under section 38(2), or an extension is requested to the opposition period under Rule 17(3), the opponent should ensure that it is filed, at the latest, on the day immediately preceding the day corresponding to the date two months after the date of publication. For example, a trade mark advertised in the trade mark journal on 24 September 2010 would have a latest date of 23 November 2010 by which to file an opposition on a TM7 or request an extension to the opposition period on a TM7a."

The inference from this, as applied to all other periods in the Patents Act where the words "period beginning with" are used, is that almost all are interpreted wrongly as a matter of course, in particularly by the UKIPO themselves.

Update 1/7/11: As expected, the Manual of Patent Practice for section 37 has now been updated (see here).  New section 37.20.1, in relation to the two year period under s37(5) now states:

"The reference must be made by, at the latest, the day before the second anniversary of the date of grant. This was confirmed by the Hearing Officer in Rigcool Ltd v Optima Solutions UK Ltd BL O/149/11. In this case, the reference was made two years to the day (27 August 2010) from the date of grant (27 August 2008). The Hearing Officer held that the words “the period of two years beginning with the date of the grant” meant that the period included the date of grant, and ended the day before the second anniversary of the date of grant – i.e. 26 August 2010 in this case. This is consistent with the way the Office interprets the words “beginning with” in s.25(1), relating to the term of the patent (see 25.04.1). However, the corresponding Art.23(3) of the CPC [1989] provides that entitlements proceedings may be instituted only “within a period of not more than two years after” the date on which the patent is granted. The Hearing Officer held that the plain meaning of this provision of the CPC is that the period would end on the second anniversary of the date of grant, rather than the day before. He decided that in this case where there was a clearly different meaning of the Act compared with the corresponding provision of the CPC, he was obliged to follow the wording of the Act".

There is, however, no mention of what this means for all the other places where the same wording is used.