The Patent Office originally refusal to grant a patent for
technology it deemed was software. UK patent law says that a
computer program cannot be patented. Sony appealed, and the
Office's Deputy Director R C Kennell has just ruled on that
appeal.
He said that much of the original application was indeed a
software program and could not be patented. He picked out some
elements of the patent application, though, and said that they were
not simply a computer program and might be eligible for a
patent.
Sony had applied for a patent for a data structure which dealt
with metadata attached to video files. Metadata, which attaches to
digital artefacts such as a song or picture and describes them,
would contain information about each video shot and could be useful
in editing, archiving and searching through video material.
The application was for a data structure, but the company was
told that a data structure was basically a computer program. Since
that ruling the approach to interpreting the law has changed in the
light of the Aerotel and Macrossan Patent Office rulings.
Sony appealed, and the Patent Office has said that the
application fails under both the old and the new approach. The
Office did say, though, that there were elements of the application
that could be eligible for a patent.
Something can be patented if it has a 'technical effect'; though
the data structure itself was ruled out, Kennell said that if it
were incorporated into a network the new network might be
patentable.
"It seems to me that claims according to either of the auxiliary
requests, which require the incorporation of the data structure
into a data communications network, would satisfy all the
Aerotel/Macrossan steps," he said. "The incorporation of a
hierarchical database structure into a communications network of
data processing devices so that metadata can be communicated
between them provides in my view a contribution which is not
disclosed or foreshadowed by the prior art cited on this
application, which is not solely a computer program, and which is
technical in nature."
Sony said that the system would be particularly useful for the
capture and editing of high definition images. The images
themselves are large and can be hard to manage, so metadata could
become a proxy for a shot, meaning that only the shots that were
needed would have to be actually processed, Sony said.
"This decision reaffirms the law that software cannot be
patented, that a data structure is essentially software, but just
because an invention contains data structures, that does not mean
it cannot be patented," said John MacKenzie, an intellectual
property partner at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.
"The "invention" needs to be considered, but a patent will not be
granted for the data structure 'as such'."
