Gowers Review of Intellectual Property
The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property is an independent review of the UK's laws on copyright, trademarks, patents, and related rights. The review was commissioned in December 2005 by the UK government's Chancellor of the Exchequer (at the time, Gordon Brown) and carried out under the direction of Andrew Gowers. The review was published one year later, in December 2006.
The most substantial comments on software patents in this report are pages 75 & 76 in the paragraphs tagged 4.114 to 4.119.
Use of the term intellectual property is unfortunate, but the report generally takes the correct approach and analyses each set of laws separately (patents, copyrights, designs, trademarks, etc.).
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Other excerpts about software patents
- "Recommendation 17: Maintain policy of not extending patent rights beyond their present limits within the
areas of software, business methods and genes.", page 7
- "Copyright subsists in a wide range of creative or artistic forms or ‘works’, including poems, plays and other literary works, movies, choreographic works, musical compositions, audio recordings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, software, radio and television broadcasts.", page 12, just a little interesting to note that the report categorises software as "creative/artistic".
- "new technologies such as genetics, software and databases require IP protection but do not fit easily into existing categories.", page 24
- "Recent attempts to agree a Directive to harmonise the law relating to software patents was rejected by the European Parliament in response to fears about the negative implications that a US-style system for software patents would have on innovation.", page 31
- "The patentability of software remains contested, with applications required to prove a ‘technical effect’, but this does not appear to have had a significant negative effect on industry innovation.", page 35
- "In simple technologies, 28 per cent of firms use patents as a trading strategy to licence a technology, while 46 per cent use patents to fence off an area to competitors and provide more intellectual ‘space’ to innovate.4 This strategy can be problematic in areas where thousands of patents are used in the design of new products, especially in the electronics and software industries.", page 38
- "There are concerns that a ‘one size fits all’ patent system may not provide the right incentives to innovate in new areas of technology, such as software and genetics. Many fast-paced industries create new products at high speed, so the time it takes to get patent protection is too long and the life span of the invention is too short for the costs to be recouped in the monopoly period. The boundaries between patentable and unpatenetable business methods and computer programmes are very unclear.", page 74
(For the relevant parts of pages 75 & 76, see above.)
On page 79, a table suggests possible work sharing with Japan and the USA. Regarding patents, is suggests taht work can be shared regarding the criteria of novelty, inventive step, and industrial application, not not regarding patentable subject matter.
Calls for evidence
A "Call for evidence" was published on February 23rd 2006 and accepted submissions until April 21st 2006. See page 129 onward of the PDF document.
