New Zealand
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Contents
The proposed 2009 patents bill
This is a proposed Patents Bill that would introduce unlimited software patents. The "Commerce Committee" of the Parliament is inviting comments before July 2nd. See:
- Make a submission: Patents bill
- According to Making a Submission to a Parliamentary Select Committee the Patents bill page is supposed to specify whether submissions can be made online or not. However it does not. Perhaps the Committee Secretariat Email contact link implies that you can?
Section 13 defines what is patentable, and 14 and 15 define exclusions. There is no mention of excluding software ideas. Section 13 requires applications to cover "a manner of manufacture within the meaning of section 6 of the Statute of Monopolies". This term should be looked up, but third-party reports already say that this text does introduce software patents.
(Question: On those pages for sections 13, 14, and 15, are the words in bold the changes?)
- (Answer: No. The words in bold with serifs are terms that are defined by the bill; the words in bold without serifs are references to other parts of the bill.)
- More information: The parliament's first reading transcript and TheyWorkForYou's page. The 3656KB pdf of the current version of the bill includes an 82-page explanatory note, which mentions software only once.
Pharmaceutical lobby groups are interested in this bill,[1] so the scope is clearly broader than just software. If the pressure for this bill is coming from non-software interests, it may be simple to exclude software.
Indeed, this bill is the culmination of a review of the Patents Act 1953, which was started in August 2000.[2] The bill intends to completely replace the old Patents Act. As part of the review, initial submissions from the public were sought in 2002. The Ministry of Economic Development's website hosts a summary of those submissions, including a section on Business Methods and Software.
Patent office
The Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) is responsible for examining patent applications.
In 2005, they approved an application for using a computer with an XML word-processor document, displayed with an XML Schema Definition, using software with the functionality of "parsing, modifying, reading, and creating the word-processor document".[3] [4]
To search for patents on the NZIPO website, go to their search page:
Then fill in one or more fields and go back to the top of the page and click "Submit query".
See also
External links
Government institutions
- parliament.govt.nz - the official government website where legislative procedures can be followed
- Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand, the national patent office
Other
- 2009:Patents Bill First Reading
- http://theyworkforyou.co.nz/bills/patents
- Masters thesis on patents in NZ, by Joel W Pauling
- Software patents article from same website, author could be different though
- IPwatch service of InternetNZ
- 2003 comments by InternetNZ regarding swpats in NZ
- FFII page with details about New Zealand, archived since 2005
- New Zealand Open Source Society - an organisation representing one sector that would be harmed by software patents
