This is an informal case summary prepared for the purposes of facilitating exchange during the 2026 WIPO IP Judges Forum.
Session 4: Software and Digital Technology Patents
Supreme Court of the United Kingdom [2026]: Emotional Perception AI Ltd. v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, [2026] UKSC 3
Date of judgment: February 11, 2026
Issuing authority: Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Level of the issuing authority: Final Instance
Type of procedure: Judicial (Civil)
Subject matter: Patents (Inventions)
Plaintiff/Appellant: Emotional Perception AI Limited
Defendant/Respondent: Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks
Keywords: Artificial intelligence (AI); AI-based inventions; Artificial neural networks (ANNs); Patentable subject-matter; Computer-implemented invention
Basic facts: A patent application was filed relating to an improved system for providing media file recommendations, such as music websites, to an end user. The invention used a trained artificial neural network (ANN) to generate, by artificial intelligence, recommendations based on human perception and emotion, irrespective of genre and similar tastes of other people. The Court of Appeal of England and Wales had found that the claimed subject matter was not an invention pursuant to article 52(2)(c) and (3) of the European Patent Convention (as applied under section1(2)(c) of the UK Patents Act 1977) since the ANN was a program for computers as such. Accordingly, the patent application had been correctly rejected by the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO). The applicant appealed to the Supreme Court.
Held: Appeal allowed.
Relevant holdings in relation to software and digital technology patents: The Supreme Court held that an ANN constituted a “program for computers” within the meaning of article 52(2)(c) of the European Patent Convention (EPC). However, it was not a computer program “as such” within the meaning of article 52(3). Consequently, the patent application could potentially go forward to examination for compliance with other requirements for patentability under article 52 EPC, including whether the invention claimed was new or involved an inventive step. However, this could not be done without first conducting an intermediate step, namely identifying which features of the claimed invention were non-technical and were therefore to be ignored in the assessment of novelty and inventive step. Neither UKIPO nor the courts below had addressed that issue. The issue was therefore remitted to UKIPO for consideration along with other requirements for patentability.
Relevant legislation: Articles 52(2)(c) and (3) of the European Patent Convention; Section 1(2)(c) of the UK Patents Act 1977 (GB614)