Court of Appeal Judgement in Macrossan and Aerotel
October 27th, 2006
The Court of Appeal’s Judgement in Macrossan and Aerotel is now up at:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2006/1371.html
The Court of Appeal upheld the rejection of Macrossan but overturned the rejection of Aerotel in the High Court.
Rufus Pollock of FFII-UK said: “We’re obviously delighted that the Court of Appeal upheld the rejection of Macrossan. To have failed to do so would have opened the floodgates for the patenting of business methods as well as overturning much of the recent case-law in the area. The implications of the Aerotel decision are less clear and we are still evaluating the Court’s reasoning. It is certainly a great pity that Aerotel settled with Telco before the hearing so nobody from Telco challenged this representation in court with the result that it was left to the Patent Office to discuss the patent.
One noteworthy aspect of the judgement is the lengthy ‘appendix’ to the decision in which the Court discusses recent EPO jurisprudence. The conclusion to be drawn from the summary is stark: current EPO practice is utterly confused and some recent decisions have reduced the Article 52 exclusion of software programs from patentability to such airy thinness as to render it utterly ineffective.”
For background information see our previous press release:
http://www.ffii.org.uk/archives/32
Entry Filed under: Press Releases, News, Software Patents
1 Comment Add your own
1. The Open Rights Group : B&hellip | October 27th, 2006 at 11:52 am
[…] The Court of Appeal has ruled on two cases involving software patents today. It rejected one and unfortunately granted the other. It was hoped that the ruling would confirm that software development which relates only to new business logic does not have to worry about patent threats. As more and more companies in the United States get tied up in business method patent litigation, this decision should be a big worry for UK companies. The full ruling is here, for those of you that are really keen. If you want some more details or are a member of the press I recommend you check out the FFII’s comments on the Court of Appeal Judgement in Macrossan and Aerotel. […]
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed