decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Ummm, read it again please | 206 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Government clarifys software not patentable in New Zealand
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 09 2013 @ 06:58 AM EDT
and more news on it.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Foss helps FOSS
Authored by: SirHumphrey on Thursday, May 09 2013 @ 09:31 AM EDT
by starving the trolls.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

FOSS patents stance dents fosspatents stance dance
Authored by: SirHumphrey on Thursday, May 09 2013 @ 09:49 AM EDT
:P

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Ummm, read it again please
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 09 2013 @ 04:17 PM EDT
Supplementary Order Paper, Tuesday, 14 May 2013, Patents Bill pdf,
(2)Subsection (1) prevents anything from being an invention or a manner of manufacture for the purposes of this Act only to the extent that a claim in a patent or an application relates to a computer program as such. [emphasis added]
What has happened is that the Bill is reported back from the Select Committee and the Supplementary Order Paper lists the changes the House must make to the Bill, which are the very same changes that were sent to the Select Committee for discussion. The press is going gaga because this takes their mind off some of the other sordid and depressing affairs in the world today.

NZ Herald
Foss said there had been "a lot of noise" about the SOP when he released it and today's move was not a back- down.

"There were some concerns out there but that was a misconception about what we intended from the first SOP."

His intention was always that devices such as digital cameras or washing machines, that make use of a computer program, would be patentable, but not the software itself, Foss said.
There are some footnotes in the Paper explaining how the Government expects the law to work:
Examples
A process that may be an invention
A claim in an application provides for a better method of washing clothes when using an existing washing machine. That method is implemented through a computer program on a computer chip that is inserted into the washing machine. The computer program controls the operation of the washing machine. The washing ma- chine is not materially altered in any way to perform the invention.

The Commissioner considers that the actual contribution is a new and improved way of operating a washing machine that gets clothes cleaner and uses less electricity. While the only thing that is different about the washing machine is the computer program, the actual contribution lies in the way in which the washing machine works (rather than in the computer program per se). The computer program is only the way in which that new method, with its resulting contribution, is implemented. The actual contribution does not lie solely in it being a computer program. Accordingly, the claim involves an invention that may be patented (namely, the washing machine when using the new method of washing clothes).

A process that is not an invention
An inventor has developed a process for automatically complet- ing the legal documents necessary to register an entity. The claimed process involves a computer asking questions of a user. The answers are stored in a database and the information is processed using a computer program to produce the required legal documents, which are then sent to the user. The hardware used is conventional. The only novel aspect is the computer program.

The Commissioner considers that the actual contribution of the claim lies solely in it being a computer program. The mere exe- cution of a method within a computer does not allow the method to be patented. Accordingly, the process is not an invention for the purposes of the Act.
Note that these explanations are not part of the law itsef (as such!). I guess we'll just have to wait and see how the lawyers vs. the judges measure this wiggle room :(

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )