Patent decision

BL number

O/767/22

Concerning rights in

GB1419547.3

Hearing Officer

Mr P Thorpe

Decision date

7 September 2022

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

truRating Limited

Provisions discussed

Patents Act Section 1(1)(b),1(2)(C)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused), Inventive step

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The invention relates to obtaining feedback in the service industry from customers at the point of sale, using PIN entry devices and seeks to address the problem of these devices being vulnerable to the fraudulent acquisition of the customer's PIN by a hacker. The invention allows for a single numeric key press to be accepted following the display of unapproved text. A second (and subsequent) single numeric key press is only accepted in response to a second (and subsequent) display of unapproved text after a time delay following display of the text. The Hearing Officer found the invention to be inventive over the cited prior art but excluded as a program for a computer. The application was refused.

Full decisionO/767/22  359Kb