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European Patent Office, Examination of computer-implemented inventions at the European Patent Office with particular attention to computer-implemented business methods, Official Journal EPO, 11/2007, pp 594–600. Philip Leith, Software and Patents in Europe, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2007, ISBN 9780521868396, pp. 212
A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, library, user interface, or algorithm.The validity of these patents can be difficult to evaluate, as software is often at once a product of engineering, something typically eligible for patents, and an abstract concept, which is typically not.
On 20 February 2002, the European Commission initiated a proposal [1] for a directive to codify and "harmonise" the different EU national patent laws and cement the practice of the European Patent Office of granting patents for computer-implemented inventions provided they meet certain criteria (cf. software patents under the European Patent Convention).
Probably the most successful was the anti-software-patent campaign in Europe that resulted in the rejection by the European Parliament of the Proposed directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions which, the free software community argues, would have made software patents enforceable in the European Union.
The European Patent Office (EPO) [notes 1] is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg), the other being the Administrative Council. [4] The EPO acts as executive body for the organisation [5] [6] while the Administrative Council acts as its supervisory body [5] as well as, to a limited extent, its legislative body.
T 641/00, also known as Two identities/COMVIK, is a decision of a Technical Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO), issued on September 26, 2002. It is a landmark decision regarding the patentable subject matter requirement [1] and inventive step [2] under the European Patent Convention (EPC).
A characteristic of European patent law as it stands today is that European patents granted by the European Patent Office (EPO), and patents granted by national patent offices are available, [3] and may possibly –if permitted by national law and, if so, to the extent permitted by national law [4] – co-exist within a given jurisdiction.
The European Patent Convention is "a special agreement within the meaning of Article 19 of the Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, signed in Paris on 20 March 1883 and last revised on 14 July 1967, and a regional patent treaty within the meaning of Article 45, paragraph 1, of the Patent Cooperation Treaty of 19 June 1970."