The US Government has taken aim at a planned overhaul of New Zealand patent law that would prevent the patenting of computer software.
It has also taken a swipe at the fees that movie studios and recording companies must pay to haul internet pirates in front of the NZ Copyright Tribunal under the controversial three-strikes ''SkyNet'' copyright regime that came into effect last year.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) said in an annual report on ''foreign trade barriers'' that New Zealand generally provided for strong intellectual property rights. It said the NZ Patents Bill, which has been awaiting its second reading in Parliament for more than a year, would improve the system.
However, it said the US had concerns about the clause excluding software, which ''departs from patent eligibility standards in other developed economies''.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently issued its second decision in the past month in which it found a software patent to be invalid for failure to disclose an algorithm that the software uses to perform its function. In each case, the patents’ claims involved “means plus function” language such as the phrases “control means” and “access means”.
A software patent means-plus-function claim is indefinite where the specification fails to disclose an algorithm that performs the recited function. The Federal Circuit has now held that where a means limitation is associated with multiple functions, a claim is indefinite where the patent specification discloses only one of the functions. Noah Systems, Inc v. Intuit, Inc., No. 2011-1390 (Fed. Cir. April 9, 2012).