07.31.16
Gemini version available ♊︎Calling Software Patents ‘Devices’ or ‘Computer-Implemented’ to Get Past the Explicit Exclusions
This kind of rebranding strategy is nothing new
Summary: How the term CII, or computer-implemented invention, is used to bypass/avoid a meaningful debate about patents on abstract ideas and algorithms (software patents) even in 2016
TECHRIGHTS was created with software patents in mind. The activism was all along focused on the subject. But some pundits are still dodging the term “software patents” and instead saying “computer-implemented” (like CII). The EPO used to do this a lot. It misleads, sometimes intentionally. This happens a lot in the United States, where the USPTO now receives instructions which are increasingly hostile towards software patents because they are abstract..
“Just ascribing a “machine” (sometimes “device”) to some piece of code or combining code with a general-purpose computer oughtn’t make the algorithms suddenly patentable.”In Australia, in the mean time, efforts continue to achieve the unthinkable and make all software patentable. Mark Summerfield says that the “Australian Patent Office has recently issued two decisions resulting from applicants requesting to be heard following examination objections that their respective inventions did not constitute patent-eligible subject matter, i.e. a ‘manner of manufacture’ under the Australian patent law. Both decisions relate to electronic gaming machines (commonly known as ‘poker machines’ or ‘slot machines’), and both involve the question of whether particular computer-implemented features of such machines are patentable. They differ, however, in the outcome.”
The above says the word “software” not even once (and it’s a long article). It says “implemented” or “implementation” 15 times however.
Just ascribing a “machine” (sometimes “device”) to some piece of code or combining code with a general-purpose computer oughtn’t make the algorithms suddenly patentable. This is the kind of loophole embraced by the EPO and IPONZ, arguably in India as well.
Watch out for these dirty tricks. █
“[The EPO] can’t distinguish between hardware and software so the patents get issued anyway” —Marshall Phelps, Microsoft
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