United Kingdom: Supreme Court issued judgment in Emotional Perception AI Limited v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks rejecting Aerotel approach and adopting European Patent Office interpretation of patentability requirements

On 11 February 2026, the Supreme Court delivered its judgment in Emotional Perception AI Limited v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, holding that the approach established in Aerotel v Telco Holdings is incompatible with the European Patent Convention and should not be followed. The Court adopted the interpretation of Article 52 of the European Patent Convention endorsed by the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office in Decision G1/19. Under this interpretation, UK courts should apply the Duns principles, with the exception of principle G and the second paragraph of the Comvik headnote. The process involves using the “any hardware” test to determine whether subject matter constitutes an invention under Article 52, followed by an intermediate step to identify which features contribute to the invention’s technical character, and then assessing novelty and inventive step separately under Articles 54 and 56. The Supreme Court held that an artificial neural network qualifies as a program for a computer under Article 52(2)(c), but the claimed invention is not a program for a computer “as such” and therefore constitutes an invention under Article 52(1). This is because the claims involve technical means, including computer hardware, a database, a communications network, and a user device. The Court allowed the appeal, set aside the decision of the Hearing Officer of the UK Intellectual Property Office, and remitted the application for assessment of novelty and inventive step.