Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Hilty, Reto M.; Geiger, Christophe --- "Towards a New Instrument of Protection for Software in the EU? Learning the Lessons from the Harmonization Failure of Software Patentability" [2011] ELECD 977; in Arezzo, Emanuela; Ghidini, Gustavo (eds), "Biotechnology and Software Patent Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Biotechnology and Software Patent Law

Editor(s): Arezzo, Emanuela; Ghidini, Gustavo

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800402

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: Towards a New Instrument of Protection for Software in the EU? Learning the Lessons from the Harmonization Failure of Software Patentability

Author(s): Hilty, Reto M.; Geiger, Christophe

Number of pages: 40

Extract:

7. Towards a new instrument of
protection for software in the EU?
Learning the lessons from the
harmonization failure of software
patentability*
Reto M. Hilty and Christophe Geiger

INTRODUCTION

Who would have thought that patent law, a subject previously considered
complicated and difficult even among legal experts, would attract consid-
erable public interest and give rise to such passionate discussion? Until
recently, the future of this subject matter was decided within small circles,
far removed from the eyes of the public. That is clearly in the past, as dem-
onstrated by the enormous wave of protest against the gradual recognition
of what is called ­ somewhat imprecisely ­ `software patentability'.1
This is certainly not the only field of intellectual property law in the
limelight, if we think, for example, about the heated debate over the future




* This chapter is an updated and amended version of an article previously
published in the International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition
Law (IIC) 2005, 615.
1 In fact, the concept of `software', which will be treated here, is larger than

the concept of `computer program' since it contains the supporting documenta-
tion (see in this sense M. Vivant & J.-M. Bruguière, `Protéger les inventions de
demain', under the direction of M. Vivant, `La Documentation française' 16 et
seq. (Paris 2003); J. Weyand & H. Haase, `Anforderungen an einen Patentschutz
für Computerprogramme', 2004 GRUR 198, note 1, for English-language version
`Patenting Computer Programs: New Challenges', 2005 IIC 647). We will never-
...