Renaissance Technologies Plc v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2021] EWHC 2020 (Pat)
Patentability
The UKIPO held that the Appellant’s patent application was excluded from being patentable under section 1(2) of the Patents Act 1977 as (1) a method for doing business and (2) a program for a computer, as such. Accordingly, the Appellant’s patent application was refused pursuant to section 18(3) of the 1977 Act. The patent application related to a computer-based financial trading system. The application sought to avoid problems associated with latency by providing a plurality of servers co-located on or near the relevant financial exchanges and sending trade instructions containing smaller orders with an execution time enabling them to be received by the exchanges substantially simultaneously.
The appeal was dismissed.