There is some good news – it seems the UK patent office just turned down a trivial software patent (similar in nature to the MS XML patent) sought by Oracle.
The patent officer made the following judgments:
“Stephen Probert drew on other guidance in CFPH’s case, where the judge had pointed out that the European Patent Convention of 1973 had excluded computer programs from the scope of patentability because they would do more harm than good. The policy behind the exclusion was that computer programs as such “could not be foreclosed to the public under patent law.” The argument runs that to grant a patent for software would stifle the market.
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