Emotional Perception heads to the Supreme Court

Emotional Perception have been granted permission to appeal the recent Court of Appeal decision to the UK Supreme Court, in the latest development to the Emotional Perception vs Comptroller-General of Patents case. 

Earlier this year, the Court of Appeal overturned the previous High Court judgment and concluded that Emotional Perception’s application was excluded from patentability under section 1(2) of the Patents Act. The Court of Appeal decided that ANN implemented inventions are in a “no better and no worse position than other computer implemented inventions”, having found that the weights of an ANN are a program for a computer, regardless of whether the ANN is implemented on software or hardware. In Emotional Perception’s particular case, the Court of Appeal did not identify a technical effect outside of the excluded subject matter, hence finding it unpatentable. 

The acceptance of Emotional Perception’s appeal to the Supreme Court shows the significance of the questions at issue, such as what should be considered a computer program and what counts as a technical contribution. We will be interested to hear the Supreme Court’s view on these questions, which will no doubt have a major effect on the future of AI-implemented inventions in the UK. 

A date for the appeal has yet to be announced but we will be watching this space closely. 

More details on the High Court decision can be found in our previous article here.

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