Matthew Hoyles

On 28 October 2018, it was announced that IBM will buy open source software company, Red Hat, for $34 billion. This is a landmark deal, as the biggest IBM has made in its more-than-a-hundred year history, and the third largest deal ever for a US tech company. It also moves IBM...

There has been a lot of comment recently, including from us, about the increasing activity of financial institutions in Fintech innovation and increasing patent activity.  A recent example is from Barclays as they try to protect innovation in account set up for contactless payments. Unfortunately for Barclays, the UK IPO...

We previously commented on the flexibility of the UK IPO in deciding sixteen applications concurrently. There were also a few nuggets of information in the decisions that might eventually turn into important practice points at the UK IPO, particularly the Hearing Officer’s comments on the burden of proof for refusing...

When considering a patent filing strategy and deciding between a UK national application and a European application, most will consider the cost implications of each choice. One aspect of UK IPO procedures that is often overlooked is the inherent flexibility of the system. In early 2018, the UK IPO held...

Toward the end of 2017, the UK IPO issued a review of a decision to refuse Halliburton’s patent application. Halliburton managed to complete the full house of having the application refused for relating to a computer program, a mathematical method and presentation of information — they were collecting exclusions! Rather than...