Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
Policy debate on software patents has been active for years. [1] The opponents to software patents have gained more visibility with fewer resources through the years than their pro-patent opponents. [2] Arguments and critiques have been focused mostly on the economic consequences of software patents.
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.
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.
Contemporary arguments have focused on ways that patents can slow innovation by: blocking researchers' and companies' access to basic, enabling technology, and particularly following the explosion of patent filings in the 1990s, through the creation of "patent thickets"; wasting productive time and resources fending off enforcement of low-quality patents that should not have existed ...
The issues of patent validity and patent infringement fall under exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal government. On the other hand, questions of patent ownership (like other questions of private property) are contested in state courts, although federal courts can make decisions about patent ownership by applying the relevant state law, when ...
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 ]
Broadly, the DMCA prohibits hardware and software anti-circumvention tools, such as reading an encrypted optical disc. For both video game hardware manufacturers and for software developers and publishers, this helps to protect their work from being copied, disassembled, and reincorporated into a clone.