Last night I was at a British Computing Society Young Professionals Group event on software patents, hosted by Marks & Clerk in their rather nice office next to Covent Garden. They ran an informative session intended to give the diverse audience an understanding of what sofware patents were and which way the wind was blowing.
For those of you familiar with the software patent debate, there is a considerable amount of controversy as to whether software patents should actually be allowed. Broadly speaking, in the EU and UK certain things are excluded from patentability, which includes 'programs for computers....... as such'. No problem you might say, that seems clear, no patents for software.
The problem concerns the 'as such' wording. This has been interpreted to mean that a computer program is patentable, provided it is not 'just' a computer program. So if a computer programme combined with something else makes a non-obvious technical contribution or solves a technical problem, then it is theoretically capable of being patentable (subject the continuously changing law in this area). So software patents have been granted for voice recognition software and photograph imaging and filtering software - they solve a technical problem or they produce a technical effect. The US has no such prohibition on software patentability, but patentable inventions must still meet all the requirements for patentability.
The speakers highlighted some of the divergences in practice between the EU, UK and US on software patents - US patents for software are a lot easier to obtain. Software patents are granted in the UK and the EU, but the examination threshold require to reach patentability is considerably higher than the US.
I was particularly interested to see that there were a number of undergraduate students and their teacher (Dr Adil Hameed) from Supinfo, a french IT institution. Given the relevance of the ongoing debate and the issues it raises, it is interesting to see future software developers taking a keen interest at such an early stage in their careers.
If you would like to know more about software patents there are some good sources, including wikipedia and this article in the Guardian by Richard Stallman.
I was taken aback to see Stallman recommended as a "good source", though in fact that is an interesting article: but he is far from objective about software patents, and seems to me to be opposed to any sort of patent system. Having heard him speak, and read some of his writings on the subject, I don't feel that he views the subject of software patents in the context of the patent system as a whole, and in a sense this is the great problem with software patents - an extension of patentability that is hard, if not impossible, to justify has undermined the rationale for those parts of the patent system that are less controversial.
His view is obviously an important one - essentially one side of the debate - but be aware that there is another side, and that (whatever Richard Stallman might say) it does have some merits!
Posted by: Peter Groves | February 05, 2008 at 04:40 PM