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A patent applicant may include a copyright notice or mask work notice, but only if it also includes the following authorization, expressly permitting the reproduction of the patent: [9] A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to (copyright or mask work) protection.
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.
The graphics, sounds, and appearance of a computer program also may be protected as an audiovisual work; as a result, a program can infringe even if no code was copied. [11] The set of operations available through the interface is not copyrightable in the United States under Lotus v. Borland, but it can be protected with a utility patent.
This argument was used by some adversaries [5] of software patents to contend that software patents would not be allowed by the TRIPS agreement. [6] TRIPS textbooks see no conflict, for instance Correa & Yusuf [7] notes that software patents complement copyright because copyright does not protect underlying ideas.
The most important advantage of patents (compared to trade secrets) is that patents assure the monopoly of their owners, even when the patented subject matter is independently invented by others later (there are some exceptions), as well as when the patented subject matter was invented by others prior to the patent's priority date, kept as a ...
Furthermore, the clause only permits protection of the writings of authors and the discoveries of inventors. Hence, writings may only be protected to the extent that they are original, [7] [non-primary source needed] and "inventions" must be truly inventive and not merely obvious improvements on existing knowledge.