UKCorporator.com helps you assemble and submit the documents required to incorporate a business in Australia or Great Britain. The patent application is more specific:

A method for producing documents for use in the formation of a corporate entity using a data processing system, the system comprising a corporate entity creation service provider data processing apparatus including a data processor and data storage means associated with the processor; remote client data processing apparatus; and interactive communication means in communication with the data processor and the client data processing apparatus; wherein the system assists in the formation of a corporate entity in at least one answering session in which the interactive communication means is configured to allow the data processor, configured in accordance with an application program running on the data processor, to communicate sets of one or more questions to the client data processing apparatus for presentation to a user attempting to form a corporate entity, and allows the data processor to receive from the client data processing apparatus the user’s answers to the questions and to store the answers in the data storage means; the data processor, configured in accordance with the application program and using the interactive communication means, is arranged to successively select and communicate a further set of one or more questions to the client data processing apparatus for presentation to the user, to receive the user’s answers thereto and to store the answers in the data storage means, and to repeat said selection and communication of further sets of one or more questions until the data processor, configured in accordance with the application program has received and stored enough answers to allow the data processor to determine the documents that are legally required for the formation of the corporate entity; wherein the selection of at least some of said further sets of questions by the data processor is based on the received user’s answers to one or more previous questions; wherein the data processor, configured in accordance with the application program, determines the documents that are legally required for the formation of the corporate entity and generates said legally required document in an electronic form using at least some of the user’s answers that have been stored in the data storage means and wherein the data storage means includes a database structure having a plurality of user answer fields in which at least a selected one of the user’s answers are stored; and wherein a store of document templates is accessible by the data processor, and the data processor is configured by the application program to merge at least one selected document template corresponding to said legally required documents, with at least a subset of the stored user’s answers to generate said legally required documents.

Or, as many programmers might view it, a fill-in-the-blanks website that picks the right docs based on guided answers, then fills them in appropriately and disgorges them wherever required.

As we’ve told you, UK patentfolk aren’t sympathetic to software patents, for good reason. The UK Patents Act of 1977 seems to forbid them:

The following (among other things) are not inventions … that is to say, anything which consists of … a scheme, rule or method for performing a mental act, playing a game or doing business, or a program for a computer … but the foregoing provision shall prevent anything from being treated as an invention for the purposes of this Act only to the extent that a patent or application for a patent relates to that thing as such.

Thus, a UK patent examiner bounced the application, ruling that the innovation was simply a method of doing business and a computer program. When the dispute was kicked upstairs, the hearing officer concluded that the invention replicated a mental act, it was indeed a business method, and that it included the essential ingredients of a computer program. Meaning: No patent.

The programmer, Neal Macrossan appealed, claiming that (among other things) the hearing officer did not respect, and may have actually been prejudiced against, the principle of onus, which roughly says, “When in doubt, issue the blasted patent.”

He also complained that the hearing officer improperly ignored three recently granted patents that, he felt, were similar in nature.

Appeals judge Mr. Justice Mann ruled the hearing officer out-of-bounds on her business method logic. He considered the UKCorporator invention to be “merely a facility which might be used in a business; or, to put it another way, a tool.”

Then, after sweeping aside the bias claims, Judge Mann turned ugly:

It is hard to see what technical contribution is provided by the invention. It is, or it involves, a technical process, but that process is itself a computer program. All the attempts to break into that argument seem to me to involve describing aspects of the computer program or pre-cursors of the program. The heart of its effect is an automation process, but what it automates is a mental act …

The good justice concluded that, as the invention fell entirely within the exclusions laid out in the law, it should rightfully be excluded from being granted a patent.

Over the years, we have written many, many database-driven programs that processed user inputs to create custom output. Some were even fairly unique… at least in our opinion. Never considered patenting any of them… even with our wacky US Patent Office.

On the other hand… Macrossan has applied for permission to appeal… did we tell you he’s an attorney? His partner, Simon Hart, told Email Battles, “If permission is granted, the appeal should be of great interest to those following the ongoing debate over the patentability of software-related inventions. It will be the first case to consider the issue at the Court of Appeal level since the Fujitsu case almost 10 years ago. (The Fujitsu case concerned the patentability of a computer-based system for producing an on-screen image of crystal-like structures.)”

Perhaps a better course of action might have been to reapply after the UK judiciary completes its unravelling of legislative intent.

But even that strategy may present a closing window of opportunity. The increasingly assertive European Commission has ordered that software can’t be patented under any circumstances.

Update: 2 June 2006: See Judge: Document assembly patent has a real prospect of success.

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