TOPICS

“Method for Calculating Administration Days Including Prescription with Patient-Owned Field and Patient-Owned   Medications”

Overview:

This case concerns the trial decision that “the claim in this trial is groundless” in an appeal against a decision of refusal being upheld.

▶Summary of Judgment and Link to Full Text (in Japanese)  

Main Issue:

The issue was whether the aspects of the present invention—namely, providing a field for patient-owned medications in the number of administration days for which a medication is prescribed, and indicating calculation rules for calculating the number of administration days of medications, including patient-owned medications—constitute a “creation of a technical idea utilizing the laws of nature.”

Court’s Ruling:

As Article 21 of the Medical Practitioners Act Enforcement Regulations provides for matters recited on “prescription” from among those of the present invention, the descriptions on “amount, usage, and dosage” are construed as provisions based on laws and regulations, i.e., an artificial arrangement and, therefore, the “number of administration days” recited as “amount, usage, and dosage” is also an artificial arrangement; and as providing in the present invention the “patient-owned portion” field as the “number of days of administration” on a prescription is likewise nothing more than an artificial arrangement specifying the matters to be entered by a physician on a prescription, it cannot be said to utilize the laws of nature. Additionally, the present invention divides the administration period excluding the portion equivalent to the medication owned by the patient into Pattern 1 and Pattern 2, as the calculation method therefor, and further respectively divides Pattern 1 into (i), (ii-a), (ii-b), and (ii-c), and Pattern 2 into (i-a), (i-b), (i-c), (ii-a), (ii-b), (ii-c), thereby concretely specifying the calculation methods, but these calculation methods are all artificial arrangements that define a method for calculating administration periods when a physician prescribes and administers pharmaceuticals to a patient, and cannot be considered as utilizing the laws of nature.

The present invention is thus an artificial arrangement overall, and does not correspond to the “invention” as defined in Patent Act Article 2(1) because it does not utilize the laws of nature.

Comments:

The plaintiff argued that the present invention utilizes the laws of nature because, in anticipation of the era of electronic prescriptions, the calculation method of the present invention could be implemented as a PC program that would automatically generate prescriptions when installed on a physician’s computer and then input with medications and appointment dates. The court, however, ruled that the specification of the present application contains no description or suggestion whatsoever on the “prescription” being an “electronic prescription,” nor any description or suggestion relating to a “program for PCs” and, therefore, did not accept the arguments from the plaintiff, finding that these arguments relating to “electronic prescriptions” and “program for PCs” had no relation to the present invention.

Hiroshi ABE