Emotional Perception AI Limited v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks

Background

The case concerned whether Emotional Perception AI’s patent application for an artificial neural network-based media recommendation system was excluded from patentability as a “program for a computer … as such” under section 1(2)(c) of the Patents Act 1977 and Article 52(2)(c) and (3) EPC. The UKIPO refused the application, the High Court allowed the appeal, the Court of Appeal restored the refusal, and the Supreme Court unanimously allowed Emotional Perception AI’s appeal. The Court held that the Aerotel approach should no longer be followed, that an ANN is capable of being “a program for a computer”, but that the claimed subject matter was not excluded at the threshold stage because it had “technical character” and was not merely a computer program “as such”. The application was remitted to the Hearing Officer for the further “intermediate step” and remaining patentability assessment (the judgment).

AI Interaction

The AI element was central because the claimed system used an “artificial neural network” to recommend media files, including music, video or text, by comparing semantic similarity and emotional response. The Supreme Court treated the ANN as a machine-learning model and held that, “viewed as a whole, an ANN is a program for a computer”, because it is a set of instructions by which data is processed through weights, biases and activation functions. At the same time, the Court held that ANN-based inventions are not automatically excluded from patent protection: the decisive point was that the claimed subject matter had “technical character” and was not to a computer program “as such”, leaving the UKIPO to assess later whether the technical contribution is sufficient (the judgment).

Notes:

• Related cases: [2024] EWCA Civ 825, [2023] EWHC 2948 (Ch).
• The Supreme Court allowed the appeal and held that the patent application could not be rejected at the threshold stage simply as a computer program “as such”.
• The decision confirms that an artificial neural network can itself be treated as “a program for a computer”, but that this does not automatically exclude ANN-based inventions from patentability.
• The Court rejected continued use of the Aerotel approach and moved UK excluded-subject-matter analysis closer to the EPO’s “technical character” framework.