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.

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.