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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 09 2013 @ 06:58 AM EDT |
and more news on it. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: SirHumphrey on Thursday, May 09 2013 @ 09:31 AM EDT |
by starving the trolls. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: SirHumphrey on Thursday, May 09 2013 @ 09:49 AM EDT |
:P [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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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 | # ]
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