October 2009 after Macrossan failed to pay a maintenance fee. Effect on UK practice Following this judgment, the UK Patent Office (now the UK Intellectual Property Office) issued a Practice Note on 2 November 2006 announcing an immediate change in the way patent examiners will assess whether inventions relate to patentable subject matter. The Patent Office also prepared four case studies as examples of how they saw the test being applied in practice. One change in practice that occurred was that claims to a computer program were rejected on the basis of the form of the claim, even if the process that was performed by the computer program was itself considered to be patentable. This new practice was challenged by Astron Clinica Ltd and others and the UK Patents Court judged that the practice was incorrect. Comparison of EPO and UK practice The judgment proposes several questions to be put to the Enlarged Board of Appeal in an effort to resolve perceived conflicts between the different decisions of the Boards of Appeal. In response to this, Alain Pompidou, then president of the European Patent Office (EPO), wrote to Lord Justice Jacob to say that while clarification of certain issues relating to excluded subject matter would be welcomed, there were currently insufficient differences between relevant Board of Appeal decisions that would justify a referral. Instead, a referral would be appropriate if the approach taken by one Board of Appeal would lead to the grant of a patent whereas the approach taken by another Board would not. On 22 October 2008, Pompidou's successor Alison Brimelow did refer a number of questions to the Enlarged Board. In its opinion G 3/08, the Enlarged Board rejected the referral as inadmissible. The practice of the EPO to deem non-technical subject matter, such as new music or a story, as part of the prior art was criticised in the judgment as not being intellectually honest. A similar criticism was also raised during appeal T 1284/04, in response to which the EPO Board of Appeal stated that: The EPO Boards of Appeal, in T 154/04 further states that the examination of whether there is an invention within the meaning of has to be strictly separated from and not mixed up with the other three patentability requirements referred to in . In relation to the "ordinary popular sense" according to which novelty and inventive step are understood to