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Neither software nor computer programs are explicitly mentioned in statutory United States patent law.Patent law has changed to address new technologies, and decisions of the United States Supreme Court and United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) beginning in the latter part of the 20th century have sought to clarify the boundary between patent-eligible and patent ...
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.
Like the other parts of the paragraph 2, computer programs are open to patenting to the extent that they provide a technical contribution to the prior art.In the case of computer programs and according to the case law of the Boards of Appeal, a technical contribution typically means a further technical effect that goes beyond the normal physical interaction between the program and the computer.
The software patent debate is the argument about the extent to which, as a matter of public policy, it should be possible to patent software and computer-implemented inventions. Policy debate on software patents has been active for years. [ 1 ]
This is a list of software patents, which contains notable patents and patent applications involving computer programs (also known as a software patent). Software patents cover a wide range of topics and there is therefore important debate about whether such subject-matter should be excluded from patent protection. [ 1 ]
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).