Why protect software through Patents?

A software patent is a property right that shields computer programs or any other computer-related performance from other software. Software patents are seen as a subset of utility patents that lack a clear legal definition. The issue of software patents is contentious both domestically and internationally.

Software copyrights are distinct from software patents. Both safeguard the product, but copyright only protects an idea’s expression. For instance, it might only apply to a software program’s specific written code. Intellectual property law covers both software patents and software copyrights.

Software, sometimes known legally as computer-implemented processes, is a patentable good under US law. The program must meet several requirements, just like any other invention.

• The invention can be used in an industrial or commercial setting. This indicates that a machine is utilized along with the software.
• The invention is novel, distinctive, and not evident to anyone with ordinary abilities in your field, ensuring that you are not trying to patent a “pure business technique,” such as a procedure that occurs in your head.
• The detailed patent application is submitted. The disclosure, the collective name for all the product’s information, complies with all rules established by the USPTO.

Why to Protect?

The patent system’s robust level of protection is the cause. According to BitLaw’s section on patent rights, the holder of a patent may forbid anybody else from creating, utilizing, selling, or importing the patented invention in the country. The utilization of an issued patent can be utilized to stop others from using the distinctive feature of a new website or the inventive part of new software. For instance, Apple owns a patent for the iOS “bounce-back” function, which allows a list of things to extend past the final item before returning to the beginning when a user reaches the end of the list. With this patent, Apple has stopped Android rivals from imitating this feature of its user interface. Similar to Yahoo, Altavista, and Excite in the past, Google owns several patents on its PageRank system, which has assisted in preventing competitors from replicating Google’s search algorithm.

Contrarily, copyright laws can only stop duplicating a certain form of an idea (see the BitLaw discussion on copyright rights). Copyright laws can be applied to computer software to prevent both full duplications of a program and partial duplication of its source code (both examples of “literal infringement”). Additionally, copyright does offer some defense against infringements that are not literal, like the production of “cloned” software. But lately, courts have hesitated to broadly interpret computer software copyright protection. The fundamental tenet of copyright law is that it only protects the expression of an idea, not the basic idea. Therefore, copyright legislation will not prevent the development of a competing program that uses an existing program’s concepts.

This indicates that software patents offer creators significantly more protection than copyright law. The advantages of getting patent protection can be astounding, as evidenced by Apple’s $1 billion judgment against Samsung and Stac Electronics’ $120 million patent infringement award against Microsoft for data compression. More and more patents covering topics like Internet business methods, business software, expert systems, operating system techniques, database technologies, compilers, and even word processing functions were being issued as developers realized the potential of software patents.

Of course, an invention can only be granted a patent if it qualifies as statutory subject matter and is also novel, useful, and nonobvious (see the discussion on patent requirements). Additionally, securing a patent for computer software can be expensive, costing between $8,000 and $12,000 or more. When deciding whether to pursue patent protection for a software invention, one should weigh the program’s value (i.e., the potential revenue from its distribution) against the likelihood of obtaining significant patent protection and the ability to use the patent to compel potential infringers to stop their behavior.