UKIPO Opinion 11/26: AI Content-Moderation System Not Shown to Infringe Lighthouse Patent

The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) issued patent Opinion 11/26 on 23 September and added it the same day to its list of 2026 patent opinions. The opinion, given under section 74A of the Patents Act 1977, concerns UK patent GB2602159 B, Method and system for redacting undesirable digital content, whose proprietor and requester are both Lighthouse Technologies Limited. The request was filed on 24 June 2026, the product examined is the content moderation system offered by Unitary Ltd., Cooley (UK) LLP filed observations on behalf of Unitary, and only the two independent claims, claims 1 and 8, were put in issue.

The patent claims a computer-implemented method of redacting undesirable digital content: an identification server receives a content request from a user device, identifies the associated user account and tags the request with a restriction identifier reflecting the user's restriction level; an inspection engine coupled to the server analyses the image or video content before it reaches the device, using an artificial intelligence inspection model trained by machine learning to determine whether the content is appropriate for that restriction level; the result includes a score and a confidence level output by the engine, both taken into account in deciding whether to redact. Examiner Robert Shorthouse broke claim 1 into 14 features and mapped each against the extracts from the Unitary, Lasso moderation and Amazon EKS websites supplied by the requester, focusing on how user requests enter the system, where the identification server sits, how the restriction level enters processing, how score and confidence are used, and whether the accused software architecture genuinely matches the claimed workflow. The opinion finds that the material filed does not show the Unitary system meeting the user-related steps or using score and confidence in the claimed way, that contributory infringement under section 60(2) and infringement under the Actavis doctrine of equivalents are likewise not made out, and that the same analysis applies to claim 8; the conclusion is that the Unitary content moderation system has not been shown to infringe claims 1 and 8. The opinion notes that the proprietor may apply for a review under section 74B within three months of issue, and that it rests only on the material put before the Office rather than on fully litigated proceedings.

The value of this opinion lies less in the result than in the method: the UKIPO did not treat two AI-based moderation systems as technically equivalent simply because both use AI, but took the infringement comparison for an AI patent down to the level of architecture and data flow, checking the entry point of user requests, the position of the identification server, the passing of the restriction level and the actual use of score and confidence, then testing equivalence under the three Actavis questions once the normal reading failed, and still ending with a finding that the material was insufficient. For owners of AI application patents this means that every architectural element and parameter use written into a claim will have to be proved when the patent is asserted; for accused parties, architectural differences between public product documentation and the claims are the strongest defence. The status of a section 74A opinion also matters: it is a low-cost, non-binding official assessment rather than a court judgment, but it becomes an important reference in later negotiation and litigation. J&C recommends that holders of UK patents on AI content moderation or filtering gather, before asserting them, evidence of the accused product's architecture and data flow against every claim feature, above all how scores and confidence levels are actually used; that accused parties keep documentation showing where their architecture departs from the claims; and that both sides use the section 74A opinion as a low-cost pre-litigation test, remembering it rests only on the material filed and that the three-month review window is the time to seek a review or add evidence.

Source: www.gov.uk | assets.publishing.service.gov.uk