La Nuova Zelanda vieta per legge i brevetti sul software

i possibili effetti non sono del tutto ovvi...

mo' sono curioso di vedere se gli operatori di transito IP verranno "sconsigliati" di fornire accesso a operatori neozelandesi...

New Zealand finally passes bill to ban software patents.

Five years after it was first introduced, New Zealand has finally passed a law banning software patents in the country. The bill passed the New Zealand parliament on Wednesday on its third reading.

UPDATE Però qui c'e' una voce critica che mi pare argomenti credibilmente la sua posizione:

FOSS Patents: New Zealand Parliament adopts UK approach to software patents, allows broad swaths of them.

It would be an understatement to say that there is a broad corridor between the two extreme examples contained in the New Zealand bill. The courts in New Zealand are now left to do all of the line-drawing work because politicians, who ultimately realized that they couldn't deprive domestic inventors of protection and isolate their country on the international scene by violating the TRIPS agreement, didn't really do so.

At best, one can read between the lines of that bill that there was some pressure to be restrictive in connection with software patents -- but restriction is a fundamentally different thing than abolition. The story that is being told by New Zealand politicians and lobbyists/activists is that the New Zealand patent reform bill adopts the UK case law on software patents, which is described as the most restrictive one in Europe.

In the smartphone patent cases I watch, challenges to the validity of patents are regularly brought in UK courts, typically in hopes of influencing decisions by German courts, where most European infringement complaints are filed. And the UK is anything but a "no software patents" jurisdiction. Therefore, New Zealand won't be a "no software patents" country either.

Comments

[Scritto da: gabriele]

attenzione, anche in Europa i brevetti software sono "vietati" da tempo e il divieto è stato recentemente confermato,
http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/software-patent-law-eu-new-zealand-and-the-us-compared/

un estratto dal sito:
2. Software patent law in the EU

The European Patent Office does not grant patents for computer programs or computer-implemented business methods that make no technical contribution. ... a program for a computer can be patented only if it has the potential to cause a “further technical effect.” The technical effect must go beyond the inherent technical interactions between program (software) and computer (hardware).

The European Patent Office accepted that the ordinary technical effects of all programs could not per se constitute technical effect because it would make all software patentable. According to the European Patent Office, an example of a program having “further technical effect” is a program that meets at least one of the following three conditions: (1) controls a technical process; (2) governs the operation of a technical device; (3) causes the software to solve a technical problem.

[Scritto da: Stefano Bagnara]

@gabriele: non so se l'estratto doveva aiutare a capire, ma io (sviluppatore software) non sono in grado di stabilire quali dei miei software controllano un processo tecnico, gestiscono le operazioni di un dispositivo tecnico o fanno sì che il software risolva un problema tecnico. O per lo meno ci vorrebbe una definizione di "problema tecnico", "processo tecnico", "dispositivo tecnico"... perchè io classifico tutti i dispositivi elettronici come dispositivi tecnici....