New Zealand Set To Prohibit Software Patents

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 9, 2013 @12:13AM from the panic-in-the-streets dept.

Drishmung writes "The New Zealand Commerce Minister Craig Foss today (9 May 2013) announced a significant change to the Patents Bill currently before parliament, replacing the earlier amendment with far clearer law and re-affirming that software really will be unpatentable in New Zealand. An article on the Institute of IT Professionals web site by IT Lawyer Guy Burgess looks at the the bill and what it means, with reference to the law in other parts of the world such as the USA, Europe and Britain (which is slightly different from the EU situation)."

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Re:Ttitle is misleading by arglebargle_xiv · 2013-05-09 00:43 · Score: 5, Informative

New Zealand is only going to (try harder to) prohibit vague software patents. The language is still there to patent software.
Not only that, but this hasn't made it into law yet. Expect to see intense lobbying by (mostly) US business interests to get this provision spiked before the law becomes final. It's happened before with other law changes for which the initial drafts seemed reasonable, e.g. in the field of copyright.