NZ Draft Bill Rules Out Software Patents 194
Korgan writes "In what must be a first in the face of ACTA and US trade negotiations pressure, a Parliamentary select committee has released a draft bill that explicitly declares that software will no longer be patentable in New Zealand. FTA: 'Open source software champions have been influential in excluding software from the scope of patents in the new Patents Bill. Clause 15 of the draft Bill, as reported back from the Commerce Select Committee, lists a number of classes of invention which should not be patentable and includes the sub-clause "a computer program is not a patentable invention."'"
Re:Someone seeing sense at last i see (Score:5, Informative)
Software patents have never been allowed in Europe, and the UK like to make a big stand against such patents.
http://eupat.ffii.org/log/intro/ [ffii.org]
It's really only the Americas that have software patents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent [wikipedia.org]
Re:Someone seeing sense at last i see (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why Not? (Score:3, Informative)
Because an algorithm/piece of software is essentially just a mathematical formula. And formulae are not patentable.
Re:Bad wording? (Score:5, Informative)
--Donald Knuth
What I'm still not getting, is what could possibly make you think you know better than Donald Knuth...
Re:Someone seeing sense at last i see (Score:4, Informative)
Hey, not the Americas, just the US.
Brazil and most of South America have no concept of software patents.
In Brazil specifically, the law says that mechanism to protect software is the same as literary works, i.e. copyright. Business methods are also not patentable in Brazil.
Mexican law also states that software (computer programs) are not inventions and thus, not subject to patents.
In 2009 Canada also rejected software and business methods patents. As far as I know, this has not changed. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
Re:Why Not? (Score:4, Informative)
>Your garden variety software inventions has little to do with math.
No, all software *is* math. Completely.
A response to 'it's just a Draft' comments (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Someone seeing sense at last i see (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think they've completely outlawed software patents. The way I read it is that anything tied to a business model is not allowed (hence Amazon's silly 1-click being tossed.) It appears you can still patent a computer-implemented process, but not the program itself.
From what I've read, Canada generally will not allow a patent on software unless it's been tied to hardware in some way. Almost all software patents currently in the US would be ruled as business methods here and thrown out as a result.
Sources: Source 1 [jurisdiction.com] and Source 2 [michaelgeist.ca].
Re:Innovation? (Score:3, Informative)
Happy to discuss your example.
Google (in this context) is a search engine - If you want people to use your search engine, you don't need to tell them HOW it finds results.
The PageRank algorithm is an implementation. Search algorithms existed long before PageRank, and new ones are dreamt up all the time.
Now, Stanford University didn't patent PageRank to release it to the public. It's not like PageRank was some sekrit sauce that would be lost forever if the algorithm had not been described. On the contrary, if it hadn't been patented it could have been freely reverse engineered. In this case, patents have postponed wider use of this useful algorithm, and so harmed progress.
Let's say tomorrow someone comes up with an algorithm for strong AI.
A more interesting proposition to be sure, but a fantastical one. If you push me on it though I would say say patents are likely to stave off the singularity rather then hasten its arrival.