Patent standards here are higher than in the USA

During debates about patent legislation, most or all countries claim that their patent standards are higher than the USA's. In truth, patent standards in most countries are very low. Politicians who believe this myth either have an exaggerated picture of standards in their own country, or they've gotten distracted by the rejection of a small number of silly patents and think that this solves the whole problem of "bad" patents.

An example of the opinion that other countries have higher standards, Brigitte Zypries, the German Federal Minister of Justice at the time said:

"In sharp contrast to the Americans, we are working on a distinction by requiring technology, inventive step, novelty and industrial application for patentability. These are severe limitations. From this it follows that in Germany, much less is patentable than in America."

In practice, the software market is global. Because it is not only the developer of a product who can be sued for infringement, but also the users of the product, it only takes a patent in one country to cause a developer serious harm, wherever they are located. A country could disallow software patents entirely, and its developers would still have a problem.

New Zealand

• Editable XML - 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".
  • This was also granted by the USPTO: "20040210818".PGNR.&OS=DN/20040210818&RS=DN/20040210818 20040210818

Australia

• Amazon's one-click shopping patent has been granted in Australia, according to AIPLA.