Patent Procurement

Always Looking at the Bigger Picture but Never Losing Sight of the Detail

As a base, we draw on an extensive technical, in-house commercial and private practice IP expertise spanning more than 30 years to focus on the bigger picture, but we never lose sight of the detail which always counts. We don’t draft applications in a vacuum, nor do we operate as a siloed postbox. We always look to provide added value.

Whilst national UK or regional EP rights may be sufficient, we pride ourselves in having a strong overview of procedures and practice in other jurisdictions. With this knowledge, we build appropriate contingency into applications so that they are robustly structured and support broader objectives. 

Our arguments and practice notes have pre-empted the concerns expressed by the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO [in G003/08] and the US Supreme Court in Bilski aligning these concerns with both real-life commercial systems and case law and now function to develop a line of reasoned objectivity. 

Making use of a working rapport with eminent judges and senior patent office examiners, we are for example both refining and defining a consistent legal approach that reconciles the tipping-point at which a technically-implemented system addressing predominantly 

administrative functions can be considered to take on a technical character by providing some form of technical solution, i.e., protecting commercial systems that from the outset appear faster, better, more reliable, etc. We are responsible for the latest definition of what amounts to a program for a computer in the UK [CH-2022-000144: Emotional Perception’s Application], as well as why artificial neural networks “ANNs” are not computer programs “as such.”

Please e-mail info@hepworthbrowne.com or call 0113 236 4630 for more information.