Software Patent Disallowed in India While Booming in China

View: 1719     Date: 2016-02-29 10:08

As reported by several India media outlets last Wednesday, India’s Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks (“CGPDTM”) promulgated an ordinance on February 19, 2016 to disallow patents for computer programs.

This ordinance is seen as the victory of India’s startup firms. India’s public opinion holds that the startups will be greatly relieved of high patent fees.

 “Made in India” has been suffering from the high patent fees over the years. Besides the software patents, others such as cell phone patents and drug patents are also on the list of India public’s criticism. It’s believed that the multinational companies’ excessively high charges for patents in India are against the equity and justice.

In fact, India is not the first country disallowing the software patents. On August 2013, New Zealand managed to legislate against software patents.

With the trend of increasingly growing global innovation and patent output, however, innovation competition among enterprises is gradually shifting from hardware to software. Product innovation by enterprises is more focused on update of the software functions. As of 2015, there have been millions of software-related patent applications all over the world.

Computer software is playing an increasingly important role in the integration of global economy and information, which has a great potential for economic growth in the era of the internet economy. Currently, software has become the core of information industry. Therefore, great importance has been attached to law protection for software in each country to promote the development of local software industry.

Under the background of China government’s advocacy of “entrepreneurship and innovation by all”, a significant problem is how to establish and perfect the IP legal system for software protection that adapts to China’s situations. On one hand, as required by international exchange in software industry development, the said IP legal system should meet the lowest standard of the commitments that we’ve made in the international treaties, encouraging innovation and protecting the interests of patentees; on the other hand, satisfying the needs for the development of China’s software industry and supporting the spread of knowledge is also requisite.

(Internatioal Affairs Dept. of Leader IP)