Talk:Software patents under United Kingdom patent law

Keep this great new article

So far, JHeald has only added a list of legal citations, which would normally be considered incomplete for a Wikipedia article.

However

• this is a very valuable list in itself - it is not just random web links but a collection of authoratative case law

• JHeald has indicated that he will come back and add editorial content

David Corking, Feb 14, 2006

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JHeald - are you planning here to discuss the landmark EPO Technical Board of Appeal cases that seem to form a component of UK case law? I am thinking of T 208/84 VICOM/Computer related invention [1987] EPOR 74 and T 0453/91 IBM/Method for physical VLSI-chip design David C, Feb 14, 2006

The EPO case-law already has a home at Software patents under the European Patent Convention. Vicom is obviously very important, and must surely be cross-referenced. But what is useful to discuss here I think is the current UK position; as part of that, to consider any apparent differences between the UK and any broad principles of EPO case-law. But not, I think, to go too deeply into detail of EPO case-law. -- Jheald 17:35, 15 February 2006 (UTC).

I think you are right, James. A cross-reference to Vicom and an explanation of the high standing it is given by UK judges is all that is needed. The article as a whole is coming on very well. Great stuff. David Corking Feb 17.

UK Patent Office website

Bugger. The UKPO have upated their website and everything has moved, so none of the links that went to the UKPO website work any more.

I'm working on trying to find where certain things have gone, but really need to update my firm's internal website first! In the meantime, if anyone else can track down the missing pieces of info, some serious link-updating is in order.

GDallimore 12:46, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I've updated the links to pages have moved in the recent UKPO change, since I have already done the necessary changes to my ukpatents site. Unfortunately it appears that a fair amount of material has been 'lost' in the move, including the analysis of computer implemented inventions in the light of CFPH and Halliburton. The link to this has therefore been deleted (for now: maybe it will appear again in future, if the UKPO come to their senses). Pearcedh 15:57, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Tendentious statements

Two statements seem to be particularly POV and would be better removed:

The extent to which this is done [swpats are granted] is currently in flux due to numerous conflicting decisions of the Patent Office and judgements of the UK Courts.

On the contrary, the Patent Office seems to me to have ploughed a pretty straight furrow in all its decisions since CFPH; and has consistently been upheld in the High Court. And although there have been variations between the judges in some of the words they have used, the principles seem to have been utterly consistent. As this UKPO decision [1] puts it, "Judgments issued by the High Court subsequent to CFPH (Halliburton, Shopalotto, Crawford and RIM v Inpro) have all pointed to a similar technical advance requirement to pass the patentability test".

As Pumphrey J. says at 168 in RIM vs Inpro: "It is now settled, at least at this level, that the right approach to the exclusions can be stated as follows. Taking the claims correctly construed, what does the claimed invention contribute to the art outside excluded subject matter?"

About the only difference has whether a purely administrative advance should be rejected as a "business method" or as a "mental act". And that should be answered in the Court of Appeal tomorrow.

I stand by the statement as it is the opinion of Patent Office examiners that I have spoken to. Who better than they to know whether there is confusion at the UK Patent Office as to what is and is not patentable? As as example, look at the Sun decision of the Patent Office where a RISC JAVA set (I think) was allowed. An examiner said to me of that case that he and his fellow examiners really don't know what to make of it and thought it contrasted strongly with some of the other post-CFPH judgements.

I agree that they are pretty consistent in the cases they refuse but, as cited by J Mann in Macrossan, their reasoning isn't necessarily correct. If there is confusion about WHY certain cases should be refused rather than others, there is bound to be variability in standards. GDallimore 15:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems the Court of Appeal agreed with the Office, not Judge Mann - see Aerotel paras 67 to 70. Jheald 15:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think he agrees with either of them... or the EPO... or anyone, for that matter. Jacob always was a law unto himself! No wonder he blatantly lied when saying that "Macrossan's skeleton argument has a real prospect of success". He just wanted the chance to throw his ideas into the mix. GDallimore 16:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Secondly:

In contrast to the practice of the UK Patent Office, the UK Courts seem more open to the patenting of computer implemented inventions. In his decision in Research In Motion UK Ltd. v Inpro Licensing SARL, the Honourable Mr Justice Pumfrey highlighted the importance of not giving the exclusion to computer programs too wide a scope.

It's worth looking at Pumphrey J.'s statement in context. RIM suggested that, tout court, "a collection of programs for computers" could not be patentable. It was this assertion, which RIM declined to elaborate on, that Mr Justice Pumphrey rejected with equal shortness. The UKPO would have done just the same. Jheald 19:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The statement by the judge was out of context itself. He was making general statements about the scope of the computer program exclusion, and his statements are another way of saying that exclusions "should be construed narrowly", as regularly pops up in EPO case law. It is important that the claimed method was not considered to be a computer program as such for the reason that it provided a technical effect, this technical effect being: "computers running faster and transmitting information more efficiently". That is a very broad definition of "technical" and therefore noteworthy.

Court of Appeal says "We do not so read him. He was just sensibly warning against saying 'well the claim involves the use of a computer program so it must be excluded'" - Aerotel para 22. Jheald 15:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Careful, that was in direct response to the suggestion by the appellant that the courts were in favour of patenting computer programs. It doesn't negate the statement that the exclusions should not be provided with too wide a scope, or the statement that ANY technical effect is enough to make a computer program patentable. However, this is all just quibbling when the bit that looks to be really interesting are the strong negative comments on the recent EPO Microsoft decision - this could represent a real divergence between EPO and UK practice! He doesn't seem to chuffed by Hitachi, either.

Interestingly, the comments do actually support your assertion that the EPO might have allowed the Gale application, which is a real surprise to me as I hadn't thought that the Microsoft case could be interpreted so broadly - I haven't actually paid much attention to that decision since there is no sign that the EPO examining divisions are actually applying the logic. Instead, they still seem to be using Comvik (and, by extension, Hitachi and Konami) as the basis for examination of CIIs. Anyway, given the facts of Gale (the claims were VERY broad), I am still not sure the EPO would have granted it (even though they wouldn't have rejected it as being unpatentable "as such"), but it is interesting :) GDallimore 16:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I have other things to say about some of the further amendments you made recently, as I think some of them are quite wrong - your suggestion that Gale's application would be allowed by the EPO is sheer conjecture, for example. You also have the wrong reason for why the Konmai case was allowed, and you should take a look at the "ticket-stub" tearing application if you think the UKPO have strict limits on applications for presentations of information. But I'll come back to them once I've read the new judgement. http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2006/1371.html GDallimore 15:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Links to Macrossan webpage

There has been a tendency on this page for unregistered people to add links to Macrossan's webpage. User:Law Guy has just added the link as well, in addition to trying to minimise the negative view of the application expressed by the EPO and the UK Courts - e.g. incorrect reference to TRIPS that I have also edited. It is interesting that Law Guy's contributions so far consist only of things that advertise Macrossan.

Unless someone can give me a good reason why a link to Macrossan's website would benefit this article, I will continue to remove the links.

Looking at the guidelines

What you should link to
Articles about any organization, person, web site, or other entity should link to the official site if any.
This is not an article about Macrossan or his products

Sites with other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article, such as reviews and interviews.
The site contains information that is of passing interest to anyone interested in the Macrossan case, but includes no content that can add to an understanding of the issues that are central to the article. Therefore, I do not think it contains relevant content.

Links that should be avoided
Links mainly intended to promote a website
True in this case, I think

Sites that are only indirectly related to the article's subject
Again, true, I think, for the reasons mentioned above concerning the relevance of the link to the issues at question.

GDallimore 10:32, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Adding References - Improving the article

The article so far contains lots of information that I KNOW is supported by the relevant case law, but only someone who has read all that case law will be aware of that. As a consequence, I can see many apparent assertions where your average reader would just go to. I therefore think it might be a good idea to start including ref tags highlighting specific paragraphs of the case law that supports some of the assertions made in the article.

Anyone got any thoughts on whether this would indeed be a useful thing to do (before I start!), as it would be a huge undertaking!

What else should this article be doing if we want to get it to featured status? :)

GDallimore 10:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Copies of Gale's application and Merrill Lynch's application

I have been unable to track down online versions of the Court of Appeal judgments in Gale and Merrill Lynch. Does anyone know if they're available anywhere?

Failing that, I have copies from the RPC which I can scan in as PDFs and upload to the commons. The question is, and I'm embarrassed to have to ask, what would be the copyright status of such documents? Please help. These are vital decisions for the history behind this article! GDallimore 15:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Original research under "Fujitsu's Application"

I've removed two paragraphs from this section because they discuss what might be the case, i.e. an original synthesis - see WP:SYN. (I've actually commented them out, in case they're salvageable.) Wikipedia cannot speculate or express an opinion of its own, because that is original research, which is forbidden by policy. If secondary sources are available that express such opinions, and we want to make use of them, they must be cited as such, not merely reproduced here with the implication that those opinions are simply true. Hairy Dude (talk) 22:42, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

The last paragraph of the section "Menashe v William Hill" is also possibly original research. If this example was used in reasoning in court, or was provided by a secondary source as an analogy, it should be cited as such. Hairy Dude (talk) 23:36, 1 June 2015 (UTC)