Halliburton ruling by UK High Court on 5 October 2011
This article documents the first High Court ruling, in 2005, and the second ruling on 5 October 2011.
Contents
The decisions
On 21 July 2005, the High Court ruled "Both patents are invalid in their entirety for insufficiency".[1] (citation: [2005] EWHC 1623 (Pat))
However, on 5 October 2011, a judge ruled that the rejection of the patents could be appealed (and stated that the patents were valid). (citation: [2011] EWHC 2508 (Pat))
The 2011 ruling
The decision itself
30. [...] An invention which makes a contribution to the art which is technical in nature (to echo Kitchin J’s words in Crawford) is patentable even if it is implemented entirely on a computer and even if the way it works is entirely as a result of a computer program operating on that computer. The outcome of the Symbian case proves that.
72. [...] Although obviously some mathematics is involved, the contribution is not solely a mathematical method (on top of being a computer program) because the data on which the mathematics is performed has been specified in the claim in such a way as to represent something concrete (a drill bit design etc.).
Related pages on ESP Wiki
- Case law in the UK
- UK patent courts and appeals
- Litigation and specific patents
- Case law in the USA
- Case law in Germany
External links
The 2011 decision
- The decision: [2011] EWHC 2508 (Pat) (or as HTML)
- Not faking it: H ... H ..Halliburton gets simulation patent after all, 6 Oct 2011, IPKat
- Software Patents in the UK - Halliburton Energy Inc’s Patent, 6 Oct 2011, Appleyard Lees
