Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd v Commissioner of Patents

Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd v Commissioner of Patents [2025] FCAFC 131 is a major Australian patent decision about computer-implemented inventions and the requirement that a claimed invention be a “manner of manufacture” under the Patents Act 1990 (Cth). The case concerned electronic gaming machine technology, but its practical significance goes well beyond gaming. It speaks to how Australian courts may assess software-enabled products, integrated systems and claims that combine program logic with conventional machine components.

The decision is also unusual because it came after an earlier Full Court decision, an evenly divided High Court, a remittal back to the primary judge, and then a further appeal. That procedural history matters because the 2025 Full Court had to decide not only whether Aristocrat’s claims were patentable, but also how courts should treat precedent where the High Court has split evenly and therefore affirmed the earlier result without producing majority reasons.

On the published extract, the Full Court allowed Aristocrat’s appeal. It adopted the approach reflected in the High Court’s allowing reasons rather than the earlier Full Court’s alternative approach. The Court held that claim 1 was a manner of manufacture, and that the residual claims were also a manner of manufacture by analogy with claim 1. It then set aside the delegate’s revocation decision and directed the Commissioner to issue, publish and register certificates of examination for the affected claims.

For business readers, the practical point is that patentability for computer-implemented inventions in Australia remains highly dependent on characterisation. The Court’s stated approach asks whether the subject matter is merely an abstract idea manipulated on a computer, or an abstract idea implemented on a computer to produce an artificial state of affairs and useful result.

Aristocrat is part of the Aristocrat Leisure group and was described by the Court as one of the largest gaming services providers in the world and a manufacturer of electronic gaming machines. The patents in issue were four innovation patents, each entitled “A system and method for providing a feature game”, all with a priority date of 11 August 2014.

The dispute was not about ownership of the patents and it was not an infringement fight with a competitor. Instead, it was a contest with the Commissioner of Patents about whether the claims were patentable subject matter at all. That is a critical distinction for business owners. A company can spend time and money obtaining a granted patent, but still face examination or revocation issues if the claims are said not to meet threshold patentability requirements such as manner of manufacture.

The 967 patent is the one described in most detail in the extract. Its specification said the field of the invention related to a gaming system and a method of gaming. The background explained that feature games may be triggered in addition to a base game, giving players an additional opportunity to win prizes or larger prizes and offering altered gameplay to enhance player enjoyment. The specification then described embodiments in which symbols are selected from a set including configurable symbols and non-configurable symbols, and a feature game is triggered when a specified number of configurable symbols are selected for display.

The specification also described the general construction of the gaming system. At a broad level, the core components were a player interface and a game controller. The player interface typically included a credit mechanism, one or more displays, a gameplay mechanism and speakers. The game controller was in data communication with the player interface and typically included a processor and memory storing game rules as program code. The specification also referred to hardware meters, a random number generator module, input and output interfaces, and possible networked or client-server architectures.

Claim 1 of the 967 patent was framed as a gaming machine comprising a display, a credit input mechanism, meters, a random number generator, a gameplay mechanism with buttons, and a game controller with processor and memory storing game program code and symbol data. The claim then described what the game controller did when the game was played. It selected symbols from a first set of reels, displayed them during a base game, monitored play and triggered a feature game of free games when a trigger event occurred, retained configurable symbols, replaced non-configurable symbols using symbols selected from a second set of reels, and when the free games ended made an award based on the total prize values assigned to collected configurable symbols.

The primary judge had earlier summarised the embodiment as involving the machine holding configurable symbols that triggered the feature game, awarding a predefined number of feature game rounds, selecting and displaying symbols for positions not occupied by configurable symbols, holding any additional configurable symbols selected during the feature game, adjusting the number of rounds remaining depending on whether additional configurable symbols appeared, checking whether a predefined number of configurable symbols had been reached to trigger a jackpot, and paying the accumulated value of prizes indicated by the collected configurable symbols.

The procedural history is long, but it is worth understanding because it shaped the legal issues in the 2025 appeal. First, on 5 July 2018, a delegate of the Commissioner revoked the patents on the basis that none of the claims in any of the patents were a manner of manufacture. Aristocrat appealed under s 101F(4) of the Patents Act and succeeded before Burley J in 2020, with the delegate’s decision being reversed.

The Commissioner then appealed. In December 2021, the Full Court reversed Burley J’s decision. Middleton and Perram JJ gave one set of reasons for concluding the claims were not a manner of manufacture, while Nicholas J gave separate reasons reaching the same result. The Full Court remitted the matter to the primary judge for determination of residual issues in light of its reasons, including issues concerning claims other than claim 1 of Innovation Patent No. 2016101967 and costs.

Aristocrat then obtained special leave to appeal to the High Court. Six justices heard the matter and, in August 2022, they were equally divided. Chief Justice Kiefel, Gageler and Keane JJ would have dismissed the appeal. Gordon, Edelman and Steward JJ would have allowed it. Because the Court was equally divided, s 23(2)(a) of the Judiciary Act applied. That provision says that where a decision of the Federal Court is called in question and the High Court is equally divided, the decision appealed from is affirmed.

That outcome is easy to misunderstand. The earlier Full Court result stood, but the High Court did not produce majority reasons. So there was no majority High Court ratio binding lower courts in the ordinary way. That is why the 2025 Full Court had to grapple with precedent and remittal, not just patentability.

On remittal, Burley J in 2024 dismissed Aristocrat’s appeal from the delegate’s decision, applying the reasons in the earlier Full Court majority decision. Aristocrat then sought leave to appeal again, which O’Bryan J granted in August 2024. Aristocrat also applied to have the whole cause removed into the High Court, but in February 2025 all seven justices refused that application, saying the appeal did not raise an issue of wide and significant public importance requiring urgent resolution and did not justify interrupting the Full Court appellate process.

That left the 2025 Full Court to decide the appeal from the 2024 remittal decision. The Court therefore had to answer three practical questions: whether the primary judge had been bound to follow the earlier Full Court reasoning on remittal, whether the new Full Court was itself bound to follow that earlier reasoning, and what approach should now be taken to the manner of manufacture issue.

The Court’s catchwords and orders give a clear picture of the result. First, the Court held that the primary judge was bound on remittal to follow the earlier Full Court reasoning. That means Burley J was not criticised for failing to depart from it. The Court described the appeal as one in which “constructive error” was found, as distinct from criticism of the primary judge’s approach.

Second, the Court held that the 2025 Full Court itself was not bound to follow the earlier Full Court’s reasoning. The catchwords say there was a “compelling reason” to depart from that reasoning, being the High Court’s criticism. The Court also stated that only unanimous or majority decisions of the High Court have binding authority, and that there was no seriously considered dicta of a majority in the earlier High Court decision because the Court had split evenly.

Third, on the patentability issue, the Court adopted the approach of the High Court’s allowing reasons rather than the previous Full Court’s proposed alternative approach. The Court said that manner of manufacture depends on characterisation, and that characterisation is determined in light of the specification as a whole. For a computer-implemented invention, the appropriate approach was stated as asking whether the subject matter is: first, an abstract idea manipulated on a computer; or second, an abstract idea implemented on a computer to produce an artificial state of affairs and useful result.

Applying that approach, the Court held that claim 1 was a manner of manufacture. It then held that the residual claims were also a manner of manufacture by analogy with claim 1. The orders show the practical consequence of that conclusion. The Court allowed the appeal, set aside the primary judge’s 2024 orders, set aside the delegate’s 2018 revocation decision for the listed claims, directed the Commissioner to issue, publish and register certificates of examination for those claims, certified that validity had been questioned in the proceeding, and ordered the Commissioner to pay Aristocrat’s costs of the appeal and of the proceedings before the primary judge.

The most practical point for businesses is that this case does not support simplistic rules. It does not say all software-related inventions are patentable. It also does not say that using conventional hardware automatically defeats patentability. Instead, the Court’s stated approach focuses on characterisation of the invention in light of the specification as a whole.

That matters because many modern products combine software logic with ordinary hardware, cloud infrastructure, user interfaces and data processing. If the invention is described at too high a level, it may look like an abstract idea, business method or game rule merely carried out on generic computing. If it is properly described as a machine or system operating in a particular way to produce a useful result, the analysis may be different. The difference often lies in the drafting.

For founders, product teams and in-house counsel, the case is a reminder that patent strategy starts well before filing. The specification should not just state the commercial concept. It should explain the architecture, the interaction of components, the operation of the claimed system, and the result produced by the claimed combination. Claim language should also be tested against the likely criticism that the invention is only an abstract idea implemented using standard computing.

The case is also a reminder that patent disputes can be long and expensive. Aristocrat’s path ran from a 2018 revocation decision to a 2025 Full Court win, with multiple appeals in between. Businesses should therefore think commercially about whether a patent application is the right tool, whether the likely claim scope justifies the cost, and whether other forms of protection such as confidentiality, copyright, trade marks and contractual ownership controls should be used alongside or instead of patents.

There is also a practical lesson in the Court’s treatment of precedent. The earlier High Court split created uncertainty, but the 2025 Full Court made clear that an equal split does not itself create binding majority reasoning. For businesses, that means legal uncertainty in developing areas of patent law can persist even after a High Court appearance. Filing and enforcement decisions should therefore be based on current appellate authority, careful drafting and specialist advice, not on assumptions that one earlier result settled everything.

Finally, this case is especially relevant for businesses with older patent applications or portfolios drafted during periods of uncertainty in Australian law on computer-implemented inventions. Those portfolios may benefit from review to assess whether the claims and specifications present the invention as a concrete machine or system result rather than a bare abstract scheme.

The final orders identify the claims for which the delegate’s revocation decision was set aside. This is useful for readers who want a clear checklist of what the appeal directly changed.

The Court set aside the delegate’s 5 July 2018 decision to revoke the following claims and directed the Commissioner to issue, publish and register certificates of examination for them.

The extract also explains that, on remitter, the parties agreed that the residual issues for the 967 patent concerned whether claim 5 of that patent, as dependent on claims 1, 3 and 4, was a manner of manufacture. The Court’s catchwords then state that claim 1 was held to be a manner of manufacture and that the residual claims were also a manner of manufacture by analogy with claim 1.

Because the extract is incomplete, readers should be careful about drawing more detailed conclusions about every claim variation without checking the full reasons. But the orders themselves are clear about which revoked claims were restored by the appeal.

If your business is preparing a patent application for a software-enabled product, this case is a good prompt for a structured review. The Court’s stated approach points to characterisation, specification drafting and the practical result of the claimed invention as central issues.

That means legal and technical teams should work together early. The goal is not just to describe the idea, but to explain what the claimed machine or system does, how it does it, and why the claim is more than an abstract concept carried out on generic computing.

The judgment was delivered by Beach, Rofe and Jackman JJ on 16 September 2025 in the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia. The hearing date recorded in the extract is 18 August 2025, and the date of last submissions is recorded as 10 September 2025.

The case followed earlier decisions in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2024, and a 2025 High Court disposition refusing removal of the appeal. The 2025 Full Court orders are final in the sense that they allowed the appeal and set aside the delegate’s revocation decision for the listed claims. As always, readers should check whether there have been any later appellate developments before relying on the case in a live matter.