Fujitsu Ltd's Application
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 06 March 1997 |
| Date | 06 March 1997 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
Court of Appeal
Before Lord Justice Leggatt, Lord Justice Roch and Lord Justice Aldous
Patents - computer program not a patentable invention
A patent application, entitled "Method and apparatus for creating synthetic crystal structure images", in essence a method for modelling on computer a crystal structure for use in designing inorganic materials in the field of chemistry and physics, was a computer program as such, and thus not a patentable invention.
The Court of Appeal so held in a reserved judgment dismissing an appeal from the dismissal by Mr Justice Laddie in the Patents Court of the Chancery Division (The Times June 18, 1996), of an appeal from the rejection by the Principal Examiner on June 23, 1995, of a patent application by Fujitsu Ltd on the ground that it was excluded by section 1(2) of the Patents Act 1977.
Mr Colin Birss for Fujitsu, instructed by Haseltine Lake & Co, Bristol, patent attorneys; Mr Michael Silverleaf, QC, for the Comptroller General of Patents.
LORD JUSTICE ALDOUS said that the basic idea utilised a computer programmed so that the operator could select an atom, a lattice vector and a crystal face in each of two crystal structures displayed on the display unit.
Upon instruction the computer, using the selected requirements, converted data representing the physical layouts of the two crystal structures into data representing the physical layout of the crystal structure that would be obtained by combining the original two structures in such a way that the two selected structures were superposed.
The resulting data was then displayed to give a picture of the combined structure. The crystal structures the inventor particularly had in mind were those of semiconductors and superconductors.
Having considered the relevant claims in the present application, his Lordship said that it was and always had been a principle of patent law that mere discoveries or ideas were not patentable, but those which had a technical aspect or made a technical contribution were.
That was the basis for the decision of the Technical Board of Appeal inVICOM/Computer-related inventions (Case T 208/84) ([1987] EPOR 74), had been accepted by the Court of Appeal and by the European Patent Office, had been applied since 1987 and was at the heart of patent law.
Mr Birss submitted, inter alia, that the VICOM case showed that patent applications for processing...
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