Archive for month: December, 2018

In the recent decision of Rokt Pte Ltd v Commissioner of Patents [2018] FCA 1988, the Federal Court found that a claim to a computer-implemented invention was allowable, thus overturning the decision of the Commissioner of Patents to refuse the application.

The decision noted that the Commissioner’s approach of focusing on individual elements in isolation is incorrect and that the combination of integers is to be considered when assessing whether a claimed invention constitutes patent eligible subject matter.

Encouragingly, the decision found that an identified business problem of attracting the attention of a user and having the user interact with the advertiser had been translated into the technical problem of how to utilise the computer technology to address the business problem.  The computer was found to be integral to the invention, with the patent application introducing a method which was foreign to the use of computers.

The Rokt decision confirms that computer-implemented inventions are patentable subject matter in Australia and provides much needed guidance on the correct approach to be adopted when assessing the patentability of this type of invention.

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