13 May 2010
The European Patent Office (EPO) has ended speculation about the extent to which software can be patented under the European Patent Convention with a decision handed down yesterday from its Enlarged Board of Appeal.
The ruling reinforces the most recent decisions of the EPO that software can be granted a patent only on the grounds of its technical merit.
Further reading
“To be granted a patent, a program must provide a technical solution to a technical problem,” Mark Kenrick, partner at intellectual property firm Marks & Clerk LLP, told Computing. “That means a business method cannot be patented, but a clever way of implementing a business method on a computer can.”
The decision “provides certainty” for software developers and makes it more likely that the UK courts, which have pointed up inconsistencies in the EPO's historical decisions, will follow the line of the EPO, added Kenrick.
All the referred questions by the EPO-President Alison Brimelow were declared formally inadmissable. Therefore any further argument and reasoning you find in the decision is void. An indications of the lacking judicial standards at the EPO EBoA that they discuss the substance of the questions anyway. Most media outlets followed the spin from a misleading press release from the EPO. Any confusion is to be blamed on the EPO.
Posted by: A. Rebentisch 15 May 2010
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