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Software patents in the UK
The UK Government has responded to a
petition
regarding software patents. "The Government remains committed to its
policy that no patents should exist for inventions which make advances
lying solely in the field of software. Although certain jurisdictions, such
as the US, allow more liberal patenting of software-based inventions, these
patents cannot be enforced in the UK." (Thanks to dave)
(Log in to post comments)
Software patents in the UK Posted Feb 27, 2007 18:07 UTC (Tue) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] Jolly good news, I say!
Software patents in the UK Posted Feb 27, 2007 18:29 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] It's the first patent from that site that I've heard of them not rejecting (although some of the rejections, e.g. the motoring one that caused a press storm, were worth rejecting: that petition consisted largely of half-truths and lies. Of course they rejected the anti-ID-cards petition as well, and this time the lies were in their rejection message.).
Software patents in the UK Posted Feb 27, 2007 18:55 UTC (Tue) by obi (guest, #5784) [Link] Can't help being suspicious - this could be another "clarification" where pure software patents are indeed "clarified" to be unpatentable (they are already), and software implemented in conjunction with hardware (meaning: all software) _is_ patentable.
Software patents in the UK Posted Feb 28, 2007 2:09 UTC (Wed) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] Yes. Don't take this at face value. The situation in the UK is not too bad, with some helpful rulings recently, but we do have some pretty terrible patents and by definition EPO-issued patents where the applicant ticked the 'UK' box are also valid in the UK.The last major appeal-court case allowed some telephone billing software to be patented because it 'made a new network arrangement' and that counts as hardware. Copying pointers instead of data (when emulating a CPU) is patented by ARM . WHich I suspect is the same as this US patent. Another recent dumb example was a RISC java bytecode patent. Very definately software, but because it was a 'virtual machine' that made it patentable. It could be worse, but it could also be a great deal better.
Software patents in the UK Posted Feb 28, 2007 1:31 UTC (Wed) by phgrenet (guest, #5979) [Link] Thank you Mr Blair. This position wasn't very clear from UK MEPs during the two votes in the European Parliament regarding the software patent directive proposed by the European Commission.
Software patents in the UK and EU Posted Feb 28, 2007 9:13 UTC (Wed) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link] I've written to one of my MEPs about software patents a couple of times. The UK government will have some but not full influence over Labour MEPs - this won't necessarily influence other UK MEP groups in the European Parliament. So all EU citizens still need to talk to their MEPs about software patents.
Software patents in the UK and EU Posted Mar 1, 2007 20:39 UTC (Thu) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955) [Link] I met with two of my MEPs (East of England) during the run up to the previous parliamentary vote. Richard Howitt (Labour) was convinced to oppose software patents by a group in which I tagged along. Andrew Duff (Lib Dem) seemed to argue in favour of software patents when we met during a by-election campaign but nevertheless came out in support of the Rocard amendments (maybe someone else argued better than I did).
Software patents in the UK Posted Mar 1, 2007 23:51 UTC (Thu) by lenov (guest, #15428) [Link] Before celebrating, see the response of the UK government to the petition on DRM:
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page11020.asp
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