European Patent Office grants software patents
This article lists examples of software patents granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) in spite of their repeated public claims of not granting software patents. You will also find links on this page to other collections of examples. You can find more using the instructions at Searching_for_patents#European_Patent_Office.
Contents
The EPO's public denial
Here's an example of a public statement from the EPO. This is from 2009:
The EPO does not grant "software patents". The term itself is a misleading concept. Under the EPC a computer program claimed as such is not a patentable invention (Art. 52(2)(c) and (3) EPC). Inventions involving computer programs that implement business, mathematical or similar methods and do not produce technical effects (e. g. because they solve a business problem rather than a technical one) are not patentable, and no patents will be granted for such inventions in Europe.[1]
Examples of granted software patents
- EP249293 - pop-out-context-menu, granted to Philips
- EP769170 - trapping viruses (more info)
- EP0803105 and EP738446 - selling things online
- EP0618540 - the long filenames patent from Microsoft's FAT patents
- EP0800142 - transforming file names (must check if it's also about FAT)
- EP0538888 - pay per use (more info)
- EP0689133 - tabbed software palettes
- EP0756731 - generating buying incentives from cooking recipes
Related pages on ESP Wiki
- Searching_for_patents#European_Patent_Office
- Computer-implemented inventions
- European Patent Convention
- The Patented Webshop
- EU unitary patent and Unified Patent Court
- Do software patents exist in my area?
- Software patents exist in Europe, mostly
- Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office
- EPO EBA referral G3-08 - EPO's internal review of software patents, reached no conclusion:
External links
- European Software Patents: Assorted Examples, by FFII
- Software patent of the year award (short lived, but the site contains many examples)
- webshop.ffii.org (see: The Patented Webshop)
- Wikipedia: List of software patents - only some of these are from the EPO
- Examples of granted European business method patents, 2004, by Arnoud Engelfriet (see: Business method patents)
References
- ↑ http://www.epo.org/topics/issues/computer-implemented-inventions/software.html (see page 12 of the linked PDF document)
