Patent decision

BL number

O/0247/23

Concerning rights in

GB2003279.3

Hearing Officer

Mr S Brown

Decision date

7 March 2023

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

David Munday

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 Sections 1(1), 14(5)(b) & 14(5)(d)

Keywords

Clarity, Inventive step, Novelty, Plurality of invention

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application concerns the production of bioactive honey. This requires the pollen from plants such as Leptospermum or Eucalyptus. However, this pollen is not a good nutrient for bees and the applicant has recognised that using a -�non-natural-� planting scheme around a hive that includes two types of plants, one for bioactive honey and the other for nutrition, allows for improved bioactive honey production along with happy, well fed, bees.

The examiner has objected that the claims are unclear, represent more than one invention, and lack novelty and inventiveness over two citations.

The Hearing Officer began with a detailed construction of the claims and concluded that several terms in them were unclear making their scope indeterminate. He also decided that some terms were arguably -�unreasonable parameters against which no comparison can be made-�. The claims thus failed to satisfy section 14(5)(b) of the Act.

The Hearing Officer then considered plurality and concluded that as the common subject matter between the independent claims was known, they related to three separate inventions. The claims thus also failed to satisfy section 14(5)(d).

Finally, He decided that the independent claims, with the construction arrived at, were not novel or inventive over the cited prior art. They thus failed to satisfy section 1(1).

However, the Hearing Officer did note at least one embodiment in the application that, prima facie, appeared novel and inventive over the documents on file. The applicant was given until the expiry of the compliance date to file claims relating to this embodiment at which point the application will be remitted to the examiner for further processing. If no such amendments are forthcoming the application will be refused under section 18(3).

Full decisionO/0247/23  317Kb