Australian court rules in favour of slot machine manufacturer Aristocrat in patent case
07 October 2025
Ian Lindsay, a partner @ Allens Patent & Trade Mark Attorneys, Melbourne
On September 16, 2025, a Full Court of the Federal Court in Australia ruled in favour of Aristocrat Technologies in a patent dispute with the Commissioner of Patents, finding that certain patent claims for electronic gaming machines (EGMs) or slot machines are for a manner of manufacture (MoM) and therefore patentable.
Aristocrat, Australia’s largest manufacturer of gambling machines and a global frontrunner in gaming services, has four innovation patents titled “A system and method for providing a feature game.”
Derived from the UK’s Statute of Monopolies of 1623, MoM is a requirement for patentability of an invention. “The Australian Patents Act does not explicitly state what subject matter can or cannot be patented, just that it is ‘a manner of manufacture within the meaning of section 6 of the Statute of Monopolies’ and, therefore, case law has developed to answer this question,” said Ian Lindsay, a partner at Allens Patent & Trade Mark Attorneys in Melbourne.
Robert Munro, a principal patent attorney @ Allens Patent & Trade Mark Attorneys, Brisbane
Referring to the High Court’s 1959 decision in National Research Development Corporation v. Commissioner of Patents, Robert Munro, a principal patent attorney at the same firm in Brisbane, said: “Initially, the High Court’s landmark decision in NRDC provided a flexible concept where a patent claim required an ‘artificially created state of affairs’ and ‘utility in a field of economic significance.’ However, subsequent case law over the past decade has made MoM a particularly challenging hurdle for computer-implemented inventions.”
In 2018, the Commissioner of Patents invalidated Aristocrat’s patents. It reasoned that abstract ideas or mere rules for a game formed the substance of the invention, and such ideas are not patentable.
However, in 2020, Justice Stephen Burley of the Federal Court of Australia ruled that abstract ideas were indeed patentable subject matter.
In 2021, a Full Court overturned this decision. According to the court, one of the patent’s representative claim 1 was not a manner of manufacture.
Aristocrat appealed. In 2022, the High Court disagreed with the Full Court. However, the six judges had different reasons for disagreeing, and the matter was then returned to the primary judge.
In 2024, the primary judge held that the rest of the claims of the patents were invalid. Aristocrat appealed again.
In September 2025, the Full Court delivered its ruling.
To Munro, this ruling provides welcome clarity for innovators in the software space. “The Full Court’s decision in Aristocrat marks a return to first principles in assessing patentable subject matter. The court has affirmed that a more holistic approach should be taken when properly characterizing the invention to determine if it produces an artificial state of affairs and a useful result. Requiring ‘an improvement in computer technology’ was thankfully considered too rigid and narrow by the court,” he said.
“This Aristocrat decision found that there was a ‘compelling reason’ to depart from the majority decision in the Aristocrat decision of 2021, which proposed a two-step analysis, given that the proposed two-step analysis was addressed and criticized by all six judges at the High Court, which has got us back on track with NRDC,” added Lindsay.
According to him, IP Australia now has to consider the Full Court’s decision and how it will influence their examination. “They have been applying the ‘two-step’ test with vigour in recent years, and many a computer-implemented invention has fallen because of that,” Lindsay revealed, “including those associated directly with physical machinery. We hope this will provide a far more permissive position from IP Australia and once again encourage IP owners to invest in their products here in Australia.”
Munro said they will closely monitor developments and see whether the Examiner’s Manual will be updated and whether there will be another appeal.
- Espie Angelica A. de Leon
