Michael Dolan Dot Com

Friday, July 25th, 2008

Software patent battle spills into India; Red Hat fights the good cause

It looks like the issues of patenting software are not limited to just the US ;-) Of course we knew this already, but it’s interesting to see that the India-based systems integrators now want to use patents to “protect” their ability to create software product businesses. Of course Red Hat is taking an alternative position. Those favoring the extension of the interpretation are arguing that that software makes the hardware novel – as opposed to the software being novel itself. That’s basically akin to saying if I have a patentable product X and an unpatentable product Y, I can protect Y by gluing it to X – good luck.

Infosys took it a step further: “Infosys, which sent a separate representation, goes even further—it says even the source code should get a patent.”

It would appear the Indian IT leaders have a lot to learn about open innovation and the bottlenecks and friction software patents create. Looking at this short term will lead to many long term issues other markets are still not sure how to handle.

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Infy-TCS-lock-horns-with-Red-Hat-over-IT-patent/340200/0

IT majors like Infosys Technologies Ltd and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) are opposing the open-source community’s demand that the government drop a clause in the draft patent examination manual as it gives scope for software patenting under the Indian Patent Act of 2003.

The dispute has been sparked by the draft manual that will guide patent examiners in their interpretation of the Indian Patent (Amendment) Act for software. Section 3(K) of the Act clearly says: “A mathematical or business method or a computer programme per se or algorithms are not patentable.” But the draft examination manual gives scope for patent examiners to grant patents where none is allowed for software under the law. Even the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Ficci), representing the software associations and the law firms, arguing that a strong intellectual property regime in India would give the Indian software industry the impetus to evolve into product-related research & development model.