Sept 22, 29;
Nov 21
The applicant applied for a patent in respect of an improved system for providing, inter alia, music recommendations through an artificial neural network (“ANN”). The ANN was trained by comparing two different files, each of which was accompanied by a natural language description of how it was perceived by a human. Those descriptions were analysed by an ANN via natural language processing software to determine semantic similarity. At the same time the two tracks were analysed in another ANN for physical properties, such as tone, timbre, speed, loudness. The ANN was trained to match the results of the physical analysis to the semantic analysis, and thereby learnt how to discern semantic similarity and dissimilarity from physical characteristics. Based on that training the ANN was able to recommend a music file that was semantically similar to an input media file. The ANN could take the form of a dedicated hardware unit or could be emulated on a computer via appropriate software. The hearing officer for the Comptroller General held that since the programmer defined the problem and the training approach and the ANN operated within those boundaries to build a suitable model, the process performed by both forms of the ANN was not done entirely independently of any instruction from the programmer. That being so, the system was “a program for a computer … as such” and excluded from patentability by section 1(2)(c) of the Patents Act 1977.
On the applicant’s appeal—
Held, appeal allowed. Since it processed data, a hardware ANN could be regarded as a computer and should be treated as one within the exclusion in section 1(2)(c) of the Patents Act 1977, even though it did not run a program in the normal sense. But, if the application had been confined to a hardware ANN it would not have excluded, there being no program to which the exclusion applied. So far as software emulation was concerned, the emulation had to run on a computer and the training stage involved a computer program. However, what was special was the idea of using pairs of files for training, and setting the training objective and parameters accordingly. Therefore, the actual training program was a subsidiary part of the claim and that was not claimed. On that footing as a matter of construction the claim was not to a computer program at all. Accordingly, the exclusion in section 1(2)c) was not invoked. In any event, the system’s identification of the media file for recommendation was based on technical criteria which the system had worked out for itself, the output of those media files therefore constituted a technical effect outside the computer sufficient to avoid the exclusion (paras 39–42, 43, 49, 56, 58, 60–61, 78, 84).
Mark Chacksfield KC and Henry Edwards (instructed by Hepworth Browne) for the applicant.
Anna Edwards-Stuart (instructed by The Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks) for the Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks.