Parallel Procedure Before The European Patent Office
A European patent application, namely EP application 1346304, in the patent family of patent application GB 2388937 filed by Macrossan, was pending at the European Patent Office (EPO).
On Monday 30 October 2006 (the first business day following the handing down of the Court of Appeal's judgment on Friday 27 October 2006), the Search Division of the EPO in charge of establishing a search report for the European patent application issued a declaration under Rule 45 EPC 1973 (now Rule 63 EPC) that a search could not be established. The declaration indicates that the EPO search examiner is of the opinion that Macrossan's application contains nothing of technical merit, but only commonplace technical features (i.e. a computer) for implementing a business method. As a consequence, no meaningful search was considered to be possible. Before a substantive examination report was issued, the application was deemed to be withdrawn in October 2009 after Macrossan failed to pay a maintenance fee.
Read more about this topic: Aerotel V Telco And Macrossan's Application
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