ESP Wiki is looking for moderators and active contributors!

Case law

Case law is a special subset of court rulings which create precedent and give definitions about how patent law is to be interpreted in the given country. The most important cases define what is and isn't patentable subject matter (i.e. is software patentable or not).

(If you're looking for court cases which were important for other reasons, see List of lawsuits.)

There are many criteria on which a court can rule a patent to be invalid. A court might say the patent wasn't original enough, or wasn't sufficiently innovative. Those court rulings are not very interesting for our goal of excluding software from patentability.

Case law around the world

See also: List of lawsuits

Australia

Canada

Israel

United States of America

Main article: Case law in the USA

Japan

European Union

England and Wales

Main article: Case law in the UK

Germany

Main article: Case law in Germany

Netherlands

France

  • See: France (various subsections)

ESP Wiki case law articles

Ordered per region, then newest first. (Also: Cat:Court rulings)

Australia: (overview)

Canada: (overview)

EUCJ:

France:

Germany: (overview) (category)

Japan:

Israel: (overview)

Netherlands:

UK: (overview) (category)

USA: (overview) (category)

Related pages on ESP Wiki

External links