A new approach to business method patents Down Under?

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Patent Baristas has a guest post from Bill Bennett at Pizzeys on the Deputy Commissioner’s rejection of a patent application for (as described by the Deputy Commissioner):

“a method for commercialising inventions that includes the step of applying for patent protection. The specification indicates that the method is intended to facilitate the uptake of commercialisation of inventions taking into account the restricted timeframe to file for intellectual property rights and the effect of automatic patent publication. The latter is a reference to the practice in most jurisdictions of publishing patent applications 18 months after their earliest priority date.”

Claim 1 reproduced in the Deputy Commissioner’s decision reads:

1. An invention specific commercialization system to facilitate success of inventions, the system including the steps of:
a) applying for patent protection for the invention in a country which is party to the Paris Convention,
b) conducting a review of specific commercialization process required by the invention,
c) preparing a research and development plan, testing the business dynamics of the invention,
d) conducting prototype testing, developing a prototype cost/benefit analysis,
e) determining product positioning and packaging,
f) conducting a manufacturing checklist,
g) entry of the information collected in steps a) to f) into an electronically fillable checklist having a prescribed time limit for each step to form a commercial entry strategy (CES) with a number of sub-steps, the CES prepared on the basis that each of the sub-steps in the CES are to be completed by a corresponding deadline, all deadlines falling within 30 months from the earliest priority date of the patent application, the checklist being computer-implemented and stored in computer or human readable format in data storage means and associated with processing means to allow updating of the checklist; and
h) policing compliance with the deadlines for the completion of the sub-steps through the production of reminders based on the prescribed time limits in the checklist to ensure that all sub-steps are completed within the deadlines.

At the risk of seeming glib and/or flip, one might think this was a checklist for the commercialisation of “an invention”, where one of the items on the checklist includes applying for patent protection, and using a calendaring system to generate reminders so you don’t miss a deadline.

Wonder what business managers and patent managers have been using Excel, Outlook and any number of computerised database for until now?

Any how, Mr Bennett’s blog, focusing on the “electronically fillable” and “computer-implemented” wording in the claim, contends that the Deputy Commissioner has reinterpreted Grant (you remember: the asset protection method (formerly known as a trust) in light of the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Bilski so that the production of a physical effect will lead to a “manner of manufacture” only where the effect is:

of such substance or quality that the method considered as a whole is “proper subject of letters patent according to the principles which have been developed for the application of s. 6 of the Statute of Monopolies”.

(Do read Mr Bennett’s more detailed consideration.)
However, this seems to confer on the Commissioner a rather wide discretion. Was it really necessary?

Invention Pathways Pty Ltd [2010] APO 10

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