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Consultation on the inventive step requirement in United Kingdom patent law
and practice
A review by the UK Patent Office
Is the inventive step requirement for patentable inventions in the United
Kingdom right for inventors, the public at large, and the UK economy?
Are too many "trivial patents" being granted?
Or are innovation and competitiveness best served by easy patenting with low
hurdles?
These questions are addressed in the following public consultation. A feedback
form is also provided for any responses and should be returned to the Patent
Office by 31 May 2006.
http://www.patent.gov.uk/about/consultations/inventive/index.htm
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Now, I attended the last consultation on the definition of technical
contribution and although I'm not entirely sure what benefits resulted - I DO
feel it was worthwhile to simply be there.
If there is no voice, there will be no possibility of a favourable outcome -
you can be certain that the proponents of patents of all kinds, including
software patents, will make their voice heard.
Notes:
This is NOT concerned solely with software patents! This is a wider issue.
This may well be a step by the Patent Office to dilute the reaction seen to
software patents and the resulting expense and time in creating the workshops
across the country. At this stage, there is no mention of repeating the
workshops under this consultation.
Concentrating solely on software patents in your feedback may well be
detrimental because of this deliberate widening of the scope of this
consultation.
So, the question.
Those who are interested in this debate:
1. Are you still sufficiently interested / concerned to be involved in this
stage?
2. Do you want to reply separately or discuss options - on or off list?
3. If this feedback exercise develops into some kind of workshop, would you be
willing to, either:
Attend yourself, or
Advise and support someone (probably me), attending on your behalf?
IMHO, the "inventive step" is just as woolly as "technical contribution"
because it is subjective according to what the patent examiner feels is a new
and novel method that would not be obvious to someone already practised in
the art. i.e. _us_.
I'll try to convert the PDF document into HTML and post a URL later.
--
Neil Williams
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http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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