--- title: "South Africa: A Rare Patent Judgment" description: "The South African Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has handed down a rare patent judgment, Groundprobe (Pty) Ltd and Another" image: https://spoor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Africa-generic-2.jpeg canonical: https://spoor.com/south-africa-a-rare-patent-judgment/ url: https://spoor.getmd.ai/south-africa-a-rare-patent-judgment/.md last_converted: 2026-09-23T05:28:41.066Z --- ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Article", "@id": "https://spoor.com/south-africa-a-rare-patent-judgment/#article", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://spoor.com/south-africa-a-rare-patent-judgment/" }, "author": { "name": "Sumeet", "@id": "https://spoor.com/#/schema/person/b862b15400af579440c268b6e9ad367a" }, "headline": "South Africa: A Rare Patent Judgment", "datePublished": "2021-04-12T10:10:05+00:00", "dateModified": "2025-01-14T06:59:32+00:00", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@id": "https://spoor.com/south-africa-a-rare-patent-judgment/" }, "wordCount": 250, "commentCount": 0, "publisher": { "@id": "https://spoor.com/#organization" }, "image": { "@id": "https://spoor.com/south-africa-a-rare-patent-judgment/#primaryimage" }, "thumbnailUrl": "https://spoor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Africa-generic-2.jpeg", "articleSection": [ "News Article" ], "inLanguage": "en-ZA", "potentialAction": [ { "@type": "CommentAction", "name": "Comment", "target": [ "https://spoor.com/south-africa-a-rare-patent-judgment/#respond" ] } ] }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://spoor.com/south-africa-a-rare-patent-judgment/", "url": "https://spoor.com/south-africa-a-rare-patent-judgment/", "name": "South Africa: A Rare Patent Judgment - 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12 April 2021 The South African Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has handed down a rare patent judgment, *Groundprobe (Pty) Ltd and Another Reutech Mining (Pty) Ltd and Others (Case no. 1226/2019) (2021) ZASCA*, 19 March 2021. A patent infringement claim had been met by an attack on validity of the patent. The issue in this case was whether a patent relating to the mounting of a radar system – one that is used to monitor slope system stability in open-cast mines (and warn of possible dangerous movement that may lead to collapsing mine walls) – on a motorised automobile vehicle was valid, given that the same radar system has previously been mounted on a trailer hitched to a vehicle. The defendant argued that the claims of the patent would be obvious to a person skilled in the art and therefore did not involve an inventive step. The court agreed with the defendant, saying that the patent did not ‘*disclose any advance in radar technology.*’ The court made the point that radar has been mounted on motorised vehicles since World War 2. The judge ended as follows: *‘There can thus be no doubt that the only conceivable candidate for the ‘’inventive concept’’ is the idea of mounting a radar used for monitoring slopes on a motorised automobile vehicle. I do not think that this can be said to constitute a step forward upon the state of the art and least of all a step that is inventive. Nothing therefore remains of the patent.’*