Patent Application Number: 2005201844
This discussion forum is available to allow the community of reviewers to collaborate and discuss this patent application.
Discussion that is posted on this page will not be forwarded to IP Australia. If you wish to make comment on a prior art reference and wish that comment to be considered by the patent examiner, please do so by clicking on the relevant prior art reference.
Here are some tips to facilitate discussion.
- Flagging a post as an 'action item' signals that further research is required.
- Flagging SPAM and ABUSE helps to manage discussion
- Placing double brackets around a reference to a claim or prior art will create a hyperlink to the original, for example: [[claim 1]] and [[prior art 2]].
Facilitator's Comment 
Action Item Show without Noise
United States
The 'shared appreciation progressive mortgage' claimed by Residex Pty Ltd ('Residex') is an arrangement where a purchaser of real estate enters into an agreement with a lender to share the equity in a real estate property.
This is an interesting application because it goes beyond the industrial and mechanical technologies that have traditionally been regarded as patentable subject matter.
The application is quite complex, but here is an attempt to distil some of the salient features. It involves:
- a purchaser of real estate taking a loan from a lender to finance the purchase, the loan comprising two loans;
- one being a conventional principal and interest loan; and
- the other being an interest only loan that is periodically reviewed, where the interest rate is related to the market rental rate for properties in the suburb;
- the purchaser taking legal title to the land and granting a mortgage in favour of the lender;
- the purchaser and lender entering a contact to allow the lender to purchase an interest in the property proportional to the value of the amount outstanding on one of the two loans, immediately before the property is sold, so that the purchaser and lender jointly own the property at the time of sale;
- a percentage interest in the property being acquired by the purchaser, to be calculated by reference to a Property Price Index quoted by Residex;
- a monthly interest rate payable calculated by reference to a Property Price Index quoted by Residex that values real estate according to the suburb in which it is located and a market rental rate for properties in the suburb.
This application is cast in a way that suggests that it is limited to the field of residential housing mortgages. There may be relevant prior art in the residential lending field. I also wonder whether there might be similar shared equity lending arrangements out there that have been employed in other financial arrangements that could serve as relevant prior art.
While strictly not relevant to the peer-to-patent search for prior art, it is interesting to note that the claimed invention does not seem to cause a physical effect or transformation as required by the Federal Court of Australia in Grant v Commissioner of Patents [2006] FCAFC 120.