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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.

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.

See also: The Symbian rulings by UK Court of Appeal - 2007-2008

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

External links

The 2011 decision

The 2005 decision

References