Software Idea Patents Exist In The UK Today!
Michael Sparks, one of the seriously talented engineers in the UK not yet working for Google (and currently for the BBC) posted on the BBC Backstage mailing list today that software patents do exist in the UK. There’s no good archive of that list, so I’ll quote the whole post:
Yes, software gets patented in Europe, including the UK, and has been for many years. For software to be patentable it generally has to sit inside a system and affect something outside that system. The patent is normally couched in terms of the system and the effect on that system, which in practice that means pure software implementations suffice as well. This is particularly true in the signal processing domain where a significant number of patents are expected to have a hardware implementation, but clearly can be implemented in software. The hardware patent is usually couched in such terms which allows for a software implementation to be covered by the patent. (Usually using language like “A further embodiment of the …”) The following two links … http://www.ipo.gov.uk/patent/p-applying/p-should/p-should-requirements.htm http://www.ipo.gov.uk/policy/policy-issues/policy-issues-patents/policy-issues-patents-computer.htm … are worth reading if you think *no* software is patentable… For example, Microsoft’s patent application on an “isnot” operator in basic probably wouldn’t be patentable in the UK, but is the _sort_ of thing that could be patented in the US. (ignoring all other aspects of said application… :-)
This is deeply disturbing, since software idea patents are not meant to afflict the UK.
The Software Idea Patents Exist In The UK Today! by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
November 19, 2007 |
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