Here We Go Again? Aristocrat Eyes High Court After Grant of Leave to Appeal

A single judge of the Federal Court of Australia, Justice O’Bryan, has granted Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd (‘Aristocrat’) leave to appeal a decision issued back in March this year.  In that decision, Justice Burley found that all remaining claims in a group of innovation patents relating to computer-implemented electronic gaming machine (EGM) technology did not define patent-eligible subject matter.  The grant of leave opens up an opportunity for Aristocrat to ask the High Court of Australia to untangle the mess that it created back in 2022 when a six-judge panel split 3:3 on whether or not to allow an earlier appeal against a decision of the Full Federal Court relating to the primary claims of the same innovation patents.

The case has a complicated history.  For anybody who may just be joining us, or who requires a recap, here is the story so far in a nutshell.

1. Way back in 2018, a Delegate of the Commissioner of Patents revoked four innovation patents relating to the implementation of a ‘feature game’ in an EGM (i.e. a secondary, or bonus, game triggered by the occurrence of a defined event in the ‘base’ game of spinning reels) on the basis that the patents did not claim a patent-eligible ‘manner of manufacture’ under Australian law: Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited [2018] APO 45.
2. Aristocrat appealed to the Federal Court where, at first instance, Justice Burley determined that the claims were, in fact, directed to ‘a mechanism of a particular construction, the operation of which involves a combination of physical parts and software to produce a particular outcome in the form of an EGM that functions in a particular way’, and that this was patentable subject matter in Australia: Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited v Commissioner of Patents [2020] FCA 778.  (For more, see Federal Court Finds Computer-Implemented Gaming Machine Patent-Eligible in Australia.)  Importantly, this decision was based on consideration of a single claim that the parties agreed was representative of the primary claims in all four innovation patents.  The dependent claims of the patents were not considered at all in the judgement.
3. The Commissioner of Patents was granted leave to appeal to the Full Federal Court, where all three judges on the panel agreed that the decision of Justice Burley should be overturned, and the matter remitted back for consideration of any residual issues relating to the dependent claims.  However, a plurality of two judges (Middleton and Perram JJ) based their decision on a new two step test – first asking whether the claims are for a ‘computer-implemented invention’ and then whether that invention can ‘broadly be described as an advance in computer technology’ – while the third judge (Nicholas J) instead took a more conventional path, observing that the substance of the claimed invention lay in the mere computer implementation of an unpatentable ‘scheme or set of rules for the playing of a game’: Commissioner of Patents v Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd [2021] FCAFC 202.  (For more, see Patent-Eligibility of Computer-Implemented Inventions – Appeals Court Says an ‘Advance in Computer Technology’ is Required.)
4. The High Court granted Aristocrat special leave to appeal.  Unfortunately, on the days of the hearing one judge was absent due to illness and – for whatever reason – the Court decided to proceed with a panel of six judges (which, astute observers will note, is an even number).  The panel split 3:3, meaning that, under section 23(2)(a) of the Judiciary Act 1903, ‘the decision appealed from shall be affirmed’.  This left the judgment of the Full Federal Court intact, notwithstanding that three judges of the High Court (Gordon, Edelman and Steward JJ) would have reversed it, and the remaining three (Kiefel CJ, Gageler and Keane JJ) would have upheld it on different grounds.  All six judges of the High Court explicitly or implicitly disapproved the novel two step test of patentability proposed by the plurality in the Full Federal Court: Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd v Commissioner of Patents [2022] HCA 29.  (For more, see High Court’s Failure Exposes the Festering Eligibility Sore in Australia’s Patent Laws.)
5. In accordance with the orders of the Full Court, the case was remitted back to Justice Burley for consideration of the ‘residual issues’.  In the resulting judgment, his honour determined that the effect of section 23(2)(a) of the Judiciary Act is plainly that the Full Court decision is ‘affirmed’, that he was bound, as a single judge of the court, by that decision, and that he should not therefore have any regard to the reasoning of the High Court in reaching his decision.  As a result, Burley J found all of the remaining claims to be unpatentable under the plurality’s two step test: Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited v Commissioner of Patents (No 3) [2024] FCA 212.

Aristocrat sought leave to appeal this further decision of Burley J.  Section 25(2) of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 stipulates that applications for leave to appeal must be heard and determined by a single judge unless a judge directs that the application be heard and determined by a Full Court – which happens quite often in cases such as this, including in Aristocrat’s appeal from Justice Burley’s original decision.  On this occasion, however, Aristocrat expressly sought that the application for leave be determined by a single judge, separately and before the hearing of any appeal.  This preserves its option to have the appeal removed directly to the High Court under s 40(2) of the Judiciary Act.

With leave having now been granted by O’Bryan J in Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited v Commissioner of Patents [2024] FCA 987, it seems reasonable to assume that Aristocrat will now apply to have the High Court take up the case directly.  But for those who may be hoping that this is a short-cut to having the Court resolve the impasse it reached in 2022, I regret that matters may not be quite so simple.

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Tags: Appeal, Australia, Computer programs, Games, Patentable subject matter

Aristocrat’s EGM Inventions Set for Showdown in the High Court

On 10 March 2022, the High Court of Australia granted Aristocrat’s application for special leave to appeal the decision of a Full Bench of the Federal Court, which found its claims directed to an Electronic Gaming Machine (EGM) implementing a new ‘feature game’ to be ineligible for patenting under Australia’s ‘manner of manufacture’ test of subject matter.  The case – which is Case No. S40/2022 – has since been making rapid progress.  Aristocrat filed its written submissions [PDF, 711kB] on 20 April 2022.  Two parties have applied for leave to appear as amici curiae: the Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys of Australia (IPTA), which filed its written submissions [PDF, 483kB] on 5 May 2022; and Fédération Internationale des Conseils en Propriété Intellectuelle (FICPI), which filed its written submissions [PDF, 382kB] on 4 May 2022.  The Commissioner of Patents filed her written submissions in response [PDF, 718kB] on 11 May 2022.  Finally Aristocrat filed its reply [PDF, 310kB] on 20 May 2022.  The scene is now set for a hearing, which is set down to take place on 9 and 10 June 2022 before a Full Court of seven judges, which is somewhat unusual (a panel of five judges is more common) and suggests that the High Court may have decided that it is finally time to settle the question of patent-eligibility of computer-implemented inventions in Australia.

The Aristocrat case raises interesting questions.  The claims of the patents at issue recite various hardware elements, some of which are common to all computers and some of which are specific to EGMs, along with software-implemented processes comprising the ‘feature game’.  (A ‘feature game’ is a secondary, or bonus, game triggered by the occurrence of a defined event in the ‘base’ game of spinning reels.)  It is common ground that the hardware elements are well-known in the field of electronic casino gaming, and that the new and inventive contribution resides wholly in the feature game implementation. 

At first instance, the primary judge (Justice Burley) considered that the appropriate approach to such a case involves a ‘two step’ analysis.  The first step is to construe the patent specification, from the perspective of the person skilled in the relevant art, to identify the claimed invention.  This is to be determined as a matter of substance, and not merely based on the particular form of the claims.  If the invention thus identified comprises patent-ineligible subject matter, such as a mere scheme, idea, or business method, then the second step involves an enquiry into whether the claimed computerisation involves some further contribution sufficient to render the invention patent-eligible.  Applying this approach to Aristocrat’s claims, Burley J found at the first step that Aristocrat’s claims were for ‘a machine of a particular construction which implements a gaming function’.  As a result, the question of patent-eligibility was resolved immediately – an EGM is not a mere scheme or a business method, and is thus a ‘manner of manufacture’.  There was, the judge concluded, no need to proceed with step two.

On appeal, a Full Bench of the Federal Court rejected the test proposed by the primary judge.  The majority (Middleton and Perram JJ) proposed an alternative two step test which asks firstly whether the claimed invention is ‘a computer-implemented invention’ and then – if so – ‘can the invention claimed broadly be described as an advance in computer technology’.  They determined that Aristocrat’s EGM was in substance a computer-implemented invention, and that the asserted contribution of the claimed invention ‘pertains only to the use of a computer’ and not to ‘the development or advance of computer technology’, such that the claims were not directed to patent-eligible subject matter.  In a separate judgment (which Aristocrat characterises as a ‘dissent’), Nicholas J arrived at the same ultimate conclusion, but disagreed with the majority that ‘an advance in computer technology’ is necessary for a computer-implemented invention to be patent-eligible.  In his view, such an invention may be patent-eligible if it results in innovation in ‘different fields of technology’ where technical problems that lie ‘outside the computer’ may be solved using ‘generic computing technology.  He proposed that the proceeding therefore be remitted to the primary judge to consider whether the inventions may be patentable as an advance in the field of gaming technology.

With all of these different lines of reasoning present in the judgments of the lower courts, the stage is surely set for a showdown before the High Court.  So what are the main arguments that each of the parties will be relying upon?

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Tags: Appeal, Australia, Computer programs, Games, High Court, Patentable subject matter

Patent-Eligibility of Computer-Implemented Inventions – Appeals Court Says an ‘Advance in Computer Technology’ is Required

In a unanimous decision – Commissioner of Patents v Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd [2021] FCAFC 202 – a Full Bench of three judges (Middleton, Perram and Nicholas JJ) of the Federal Court of Australia (‘Full Court’) has reversed last year’s ruling by Justice Burley that claims directed to a so-called ‘feature game’ implemented on an electronic gaming machine (EGM) constituted a patent-eligible ‘manner of manufacture’ under Australia law.  (A ‘feature game’ is a secondary, or bonus, game triggered by the occurrence of a defined event in the ‘base’ game of spinning reels.)  As I explained at the time, Justice Burley applied a two step test, asking firstly whether ‘the claimed invention is for a mere scheme or business method of the type that is not the proper subject matter of a grant of letters patent’ and then – if this question is answered in the affirmative – ‘whether the computer-implemented method is one where invention lay in the computerisation of the method’ as opposed to ‘merely plugging an unpatentable scheme into a computer’.  He found the claims to be patentable at the first step, because they were directed to ‘a mechanism of a particular construction’, i.e. a gaming machine.

The Full Court has rejected Justice Burley’s test, with the majority (Middleton and Perram JJ) proposing an alternative two step test (at [26]) which asks firstly whether the claimed invention is ‘a computer-implemented invention’ and then – if so – ‘can the invention claimed broadly be described as an advance in computer technology’.  The majority determined that Aristocrat’s EGM, despite being claimed in terms of a combination of hardware and software components, was in substance a computer-implemented invention, and that the asserted contribution of the claimed invention ‘pertains only to the use of a computer’ and not to ‘the development or advance of computer technology’ (at [63]-[64]).  As such, they concluded that the claims were not directed to patent-eligible subject matter.

The third judge of the Full Court, Nicholas J, arrived at the same ultimate conclusion, by different reasoning.  He agreed with the majority that Justice Burley’s two step test was not the correct approach, because it failed to ‘engage with the Commissioner’s submission that the invention as described and claimed was in substance a mere scheme or set of rules for playing a game implemented using generic computer technology for its well-known and well-understood functions’ (at [135]).  However, rather than embarking upon an inquiry as to whether Aristocrat’s claims were directed to a ‘computer-implemented invention’ he simply observed that ‘the substance of the invention, as described and claimed, resides in the game program code which embodies a computer implemented scheme or set of rules for the playing of a game’ (at [138]).  He further reasoned (at [140]-[142]) that the game code does not solve any ‘technological problem’, nor does it exhibit any ‘unusual technical effect due to the way in which the computer is utilised’, and therefore that there is nothing ‘about the way in which the game code causes the EGM to operate which can be regarded as having transformed what might otherwise be regarded as purely abstract information encoded in memory into something possessing the required artificial effect.’

While the Full Court found the representative claim at issue to be unpatentable, it did not entirely foreclose the possibility that there may be patent-eligible aspects to the inventions disclosed in Aristocrat’s four innovation patents.  The case has been remitted back to Justice Burley to determine any residual issues in light of the Full Court’s judgment.

There are positive and negative aspects to this decision.  On the plus side, the approach taken by the majority brings some clarity to the approach to be taken in construing and assessing claims to computer-implemented inventions, which often comprise a physical apparatus defined in terms of (possibly conventional) hardware, configured via software for particular functionality.  On the down side, however, the majority also relied upon the existence of ‘an advance in computer technology’ to confer patent-eligibility upon a computer-implemented invention, without providing clear guidance on what, exactly, is covered by this terminology.  The decision also perpetuates an uncertainty that exists around the exact role to be played by prior art information in applying the ‘manner of manufacture’ test to assess patent-eligibility.

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Tags: Appeal, Australia, Computer programs, Games, Patentable subject matter

Games — Now Less Patentable than Ever in Australia

In a recent decision, a Hearing Officer within the Australian Patent Office rejected Australian patent application no. 2018219972, in the name of casino operator Crown Melbourne Ltd, relating to a modified roulette table layout.  In particular, the claimed invention was designed to provide a ‘double zero’ roulette game having similar visual appearance and betting options to a ‘single zero’ game, while also offering additional betting options over the traditional ‘double zero’ game.  In essence, the modified layout ‘stacks’ the single and double zero boxes at one end of the number grid, instead of placing them side-by-side in the previously-established manner.  The application was rejected on the ground that the subject matter of the claimed invention is ineligible for patenting, i.e. is not for a ‘manner of manufacture’ under Australian law.  Specifically, the Hearing Officer found that ‘merely presenting a different wagering space layout that does nothing otherwise to the functioning of the apparatus cannot be considered as a physical phenomenon or transformation’, which would have been required for the invention to be patent-eligible.

You might not be surprised by this outcome.  Surely – you might think – simply providing a different layout of the numbered boxes on a roulette table cannot be the kind of thing for which a patent may be granted?  Traditionally, however, the situation would not have been considered so clear-cut.  Changing the layout also changes the wagering options available to players of the game.  The layout thus interacts with the rules of the game to change the game itself, arguably producing a ‘new’ game.  Throughout most of the history of the Australian patent system, this would have been considered patentable.

But you do not have to take my word for this.  The very same claims were previously found to be patentable by the Australian Patent Office!  The rejected application is a divisional, the ultimate ancestor of which was application no. 2008203384 (‘the original application’).  That application was itself filed in parallel with innovation patent no. 2008100694 (‘the innovation patent’).  The innovation patent was examined in 2008, and successfully certified on 5 February 2009.  The original application was also eventually examined, and received a clear examination report on 3 November 2014.  The only reason the original application did not proceed to acceptance and grant was because the innovation patent remained in force, and section 64 of the Australian Patents Act 1990 prohibits a single owner from being granted two patents simultaneously for the same invention.  After the innovation patent expired on 25 July 2016, Crown submitted that the original application should then proceed to acceptance.  But, instead, the Patent Office issued an adverse examination report, including the objection that the claimed invention was not a patentable ‘manner of manufacture’.

So, what changed?  The law?  Patent Office practice?  Or something less easily identified?

In this article, I discuss developments over the past 20 years in the patentability of games in Australia.  In summary, it seems that as recently as 2003 it was relatively straightforward to obtain a patent for a game, with the overwhelming majority of examined applications being successful.  Over time it has become substantially more difficult, although there are numerous examples of a relatively liberal approach by the Australian Patent Office up until at least the early 2010’s.  But since 2015 the tide has definitely turned, and patent applications relating to games now fail more often than they succeed.  The recent Aristocrat decision provides a glimmer of hope for game innovators, suggesting the possibility of a return to the principle that a working inter-relationship between game apparatus and associated rules of play may be sufficient to support a valid patent.  However, with this decision currently under appeal, and the Patent Office applying it narrowly only to certain types of analogous computer-implemented casino gaming systems, the prospects of any significant new liberalisation of examination practice in this area seem limited.

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Tags: Australia, Games, IPGOD, Patentable subject matter

Commissioner of Patents Applies to Appeal Aristocrat Ruling

In a development that should surprise nobody – least of all readers of this blog, where I have foreshadowed it twice – on 20 July 2020 the Commissioner of Patents filed an application for leave to appeal the decision in Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited v Commissioner of Patents [2020] FCA 778 to a Full Bench of the Federal Court of Australia.  I wrote about the original decision back in June, and a further decision relating to costs earlier in July.  While the Commissioner does require the Full Court to agree to hear the appeal, I anticipate that the Court will adopt the same practice as in earlier similar cases, and hear the application for leave, and the substantive appeal, concurrently.

This should be an important appeal. The Aristocrat case presents the Full Court with an opportunity to draw a clear distinction between patent-eligible and ineligible computer-implemented inventions.  The case concerns electronic gaming machines (EGMs).  On the one hand – as the primary judge found – an EGM is very much a material product, and not an ephemeral scheme or abstract idea.  It is thus arguably just as eligible for patent protection as a traditional mechanical gaming machine.  On the other hand, in a number of recent cases the Full Court has found that taking an unpatentable method, scheme or idea, and ‘merely’ implementing it through generic programming of conventional hardware does not transform it into a patentable invention.

An argument may be made that the claims in Aristocrat differ from those in other cases, where computer-implemented processes were found to be patent-ineligible, only inasmuch as a number of the recited hardware elements are specific to EGMs.  These elements were not, however, novel or inventive, either individually or in combination, at the priority date.  They were, in fact, well-known and conventional within the specific context of the regulated gaming industry in Australia.  It was this context, as much as anything else, that led the primary judge to conclude that…

…to the person skilled in the art, the invention may be characterised as a machine of a particular construction which implements a gaming function. It yields a practical and useful result. Simply put, the machine that is the subject of the claims is built to allow people to play games on it. That is its only purpose. In this regard, the physical and virtual features of the display, reels, credit input mechanism, gameplay mechanism and game controller combine to produce the invention. It is a device of a specific character.

I would note also that, in contrast to something of an abstract nature, an EGM is ‘a device of a specific character’ upon which one could painfully stub one’s toe, if one were not careful!  The question is whether the primary judge was therefore correct to conclude, as he did, that such a device is inherently patent-eligible, without proceeding to consider – as the Full Court has done in previous cases relating to computer-implemented methods – whether there is any invention in the computerisation of the method itself.

The case number for the appeal in the NSW Division of the Federal Court of Australia is NSD787/2020.

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Tags: Appeal, Australia, Computer programs, Games, Patentable subject matter

Costs Award Discounted for ‘Over-Egged’ Evidence in Aristocrat Case

In a postscript to last month’s decision in Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited v Commissioner of Patents [2020] FCA 778 (see Federal Court Finds Computer-Implemented Gaming Machine Patent-Eligible in Australia), the court has now ruled that the Commissioner of Patents should pay only 50% of Aristocrat’s costs associated with its expert evidence: Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited v Commissioner of Patents (No 2) [2020] FCA 974.  Under the usual practice in Australia (i.e. the so-called English Rule) a losing party can expect to be ordered to pay the reasonable costs (including attorney’s fees) of the successful party.  In this instance, however, Justice Burley was partially persuaded by the Commissioner’s argument that much of Aristocrat’s evidence ‘was irrelevant or of very limited utility’, and consequently applied a discount in respect of the costs associate with expert evidence (but not the lay evidence that was also adduced by Aristocrat).

As I reported last month, the expert witnesses in the case fell into two categories: four (two on each side) were gaming experts, and two (one on each side) were Human Computer Interaction (HCI) experts.  The six expert witnesses were cross-examined, and also combined to prepare two joint expert reports.  However, in light of the decision of the Full Court in Commissioner of Patents v Rokt Pte Ltd [2020] FCAFC 86 – which was decided after the hearing in Aristocrat, but prior to the judgment being handed down – it is now clear that the role of expert evidence in determining whether or not a claimed invention is for a patent-eligible ‘manner of manufacture’ is limited (see Rokt’s Computerised ‘Marketing Scheme’ Fails Patent-Eligibility Test on Appeal).  Aristocrat’s position was, essentially, that its approach to the expert evidence had been reasonable, in view of the way in which the approach to patent-eligibility seemed to have been developing in Australia prior to Rokt – particularly within the Patent Office, including the decision appealed in this case by Aristocrat.

Perhaps influenced by the Judgment of Solomon, Justice Burley determined that the costs (though fortunately not – unlike the biblical baby – the experts themselves) should be split in two, finding (at [12]):

There is merit in the Commissioner’s submissions, in the sense that the expert evidence adduced by Aristocrat somewhat over-egged the pudding. Even making allowances for the uncertainties arising from the development of the law in relation to the patentability of inventions involving computerisation, there was really no justification for calling three experts in separate fields to attempt to establish that there was a “technical effect” in Aristocrat’s secondary argument. Aristocrat was perhaps entitled to be creative in attempting to justify the patentability of its invention, but that should not be funded by the Commissioner, even on an ordinary basis. I agree that the Commissioner should bear 50% of the costs of Aristocrat’s experts.

Additionally, the judge rejected Aristocrat’s contention that it should also receive its costs associated with the original Patent Office decision made by a delegate of the Commissioner, finding (at [8]) that ‘[t]he delegate acted as a neutral arbiter performing a statutory function’ and that the Commissioner had not ‘engaged in any conduct that would remotely warrant an order of costs against her in relation to the decision from which the appeal was brought.’

The court’s orders also grant the Commissioner a stay of the orders requiring Aristocrat's innovation patents to be certified (but not the costs orders) for a period of 14 days (until 24 July 2020), within which she may apply for leave to appeal to a Full Bench of the Federal Court of Australia.  I anticipate that an application for leave will be filed.

[Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the costs orders had been stayed pending any appeal by the Commissioner.]

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Tags: Australia, Computer programs, Costs, Games, Patentable subject matter

Federal Court Finds Computer-Implemented Gaming Machine Patent-Eligible in Australia

On appeal from a decision of a delegate of the Commissioner of Patents, a single judge (Justice Burley) of the Federal Court of Australia has found that the claims of a number of innovation patents owned by Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd, directed to electronic gaming machines (EGMs), are directed to patent-eligible subject matter: Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited v Commissioner of Patents [2020] FCA 778.  As the judge put it in the first paragraph of the judgment, the central question in the case was ‘whether a claim to an [EGM], which includes a combination of physical parts and computer software to produce a particular outcome in the form of gameplay, is a manner of manufacture’ (referring to the test for patentable subject matter under the Australian Patents Act 1990).

In a series of five decisions relating to computer-implemented inventions issued by Full Benches of the court since 2014 – including one from an expanded bench of five judges – a ‘two step’ approach to assessing patent-eligibility of such inventions has emerged.  The first step is to construe the patent specification, from the perspective of the person skilled in the relevant art, to identify the claimed invention.  This is to be determined as a matter of substance, and not merely based on the particular form of the claims.  If the invention, in substance, comprises patent-ineligible subject matter, such as a mere scheme, idea, or business method, then the second step involves an enquiry into whether the claimed computerisation involves some further contribution sufficient to render the invention patent-eligible.  It is not enough, as the Full Court has made clear, simply to ‘put’ an otherwise unpatentable scheme, idea, or business method ‘into’ a computer.

In the present case, however, the judge effectively short-circuited this enquiry, finding at the first step that Aristocrat’s claims were, in substance, for ‘a machine of a particular construction which implements a gaming function’.  As a result, the question of patent-eligibility was resolved immediately – an EGM is not a mere scheme or a business method, and is thus a ‘manner of manufacture’.  There was, the judge concluded, no need to proceed with step two.

This finding seems straightforward enough, and accords with common sense.  As the judge also observed, there is no dispute that an old-style mechanical gaming machine would be patent-eligible, so why should the outcome be any different if the same functionality is implemented using modern technology?  On the other hand, however, the form of the claims in the present case is not necessarily so different from those in a number of the earlier decisions where the inventions were found not to be patent-eligible.  I therefore suspect that this decision may not yet be the last word on the patentability of EGMs under the ‘manner of manufacture’ test.

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Tags: Australia, Computer programs, Games, Patentable subject matter

The Challenges of Protecting and Commercialising IP in Casino Games

There are people who seem to believe that ‘inventing’ is some kind of get-rich-quick scheme – come up with an idea, slap a patent on it, and then wait for the untold millions to (magically) come rolling in.  A logical corollary to this belief is that if somebody acquires an idea from such a person, and subsequently incorporates the idea into a patent application, then they have clearly deprived the originator of their rightful fortune!  And, of course, the way to deal with such a situation is by spending, collectively, a few hundred thousand dollars disputing ownership of the patent application firstly in a state Supreme Court and then before a Full Bench of the Federal Court of Australia.

The only way this could all be a bigger waste of money and effort would be if the patent application in question was directed to some kind of unpatentable subject matter, such as a method of wagering on a card game, for example.  Sadly, this was precisely the situation in a case decided last October, Kafataris v Davis [2016] FCAFC 134.  There was, however, more to the dispute than inventorship and rights to a potentially worthless patent application.  Also at issue was whether or not the plaintiff had made a contribution to the wagering system described in the application that the defendants were obliged to keep confidential.  If so, then he might have been entitled to some form of compensation, regardless of the fate of the patent application.

Setting aside the ultimate futility of the legal action, there is a valuable lesson to be extracted from this particular dispute for those people who choose to direct their innovative efforts to the wagering and gaming industry – namely that novel developments in this field can be notoriously difficult to protect as a form of intellectual property.  Fortunately, the high level of regulation of gaming creates some barriers to entry which can be used, along with branding, as a means to secure an edge on potential competitors, even if patents are not available.

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Tags: Confidential information, Games, Patentable subject matter