EU to Redefine Scope of Software Patents

karvind writes "According to story on ZDNet, the European Parliament (EP) has enlisted the help of intellectual property lawyers to amend the directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions so that companies are prevented from patenting pure software. According to article: "The ongoing argument over patents in the software industry revolves around the distinction between physical inventions that use software -- such as a car braking system -- and pure software." (See also this earlier story about the EU and software patents.)"

Comments

Re:Will this really do anything?

[oneandoneis2]

Not according to the Financial Times: "Software would be patentable only where it controls a physical process or what Mr Rocard describes as a "controllable force of nature". . . by seeking to draw a line between patents for tangible and intangible inventions, Mr Rocard would make it impossible for companies to win patents in areas such as data, video and audio compression, speech coding and encryption.

The EP is pushing for the right changes, making it impossible to weasel patents through by using weasel words. We just have to hope they get them through.

Re:Still dangerous for hardware

[gowen]

If now patents on software are acceptable for "physical inventions that use software"

being applied to a physical invention is not enough. The patent would have to apply to the physical control of that device. So, to take your example of a scanner or webcam : If you wrote a new algorithm that controlled how the webcam followed a moving person in its field of vision, or -- thats patentable. If your invention is simply a novel way of storing or compressing the image data -- that has no physical manifestation and is solely concerned with pushing data about, so it's not patentable.

Or at least, that's what I think, having read the Financial Times' analysis of the changes.

RTFA

[sytxr]

They do want to allow patents on physical inventions and industrial processes normally patentable which include software components, but they don't want software patents like jpeg, double clicking, online shopping, etc. That is why legal expert advice is needed to get the wording right.

They are not going to let patent lawyers write the directive. They are consulting with legal experts" - certainly with at least some good and honest lawyers and alikes like the ones of the EFF - to make sure that it will be absolutely impossible for the patent office, patent lawyers and big corporations to twist the the meaning of the law to have software patents granted anyway.

Software patents have already been illegal in the EU, even if the patent office did grant them. No company however has to my knowledge ever in the EU tried to sue another company for such software patent, because they know it wouldn't stand in court.

Re:Will this really do anything?

[oneandoneis2]

No, because:

A printer driver isn't a novel and non-obvious invention.

A printer isn't actually controlled by the driver; the driver just 'translates' a, say, Photoshop picture into a printer-comprehensible 'this is what the page should look like' picture. And since patents should not be granted for "the treatment, the manipulation, the representation and the presentation of information through software", that seems to me to exclude drivers altogether.

Re:Oh no.

[jabuzz]

Except there was prior art on the RAS patent. Technically it should not have been granted. The only reason they got away with it is because the U.K. goverment decided that the prior implementation should remain a closely guarded state secret. So unfortunately your claims that the RAS patent was somehow special fail utterly.

had to put this here for refference

[Itanshi]

http://totallyabsurd.com/ absurd inventions? yep lots of them, glad to know software isn't the worse of all posibilities ^^;;