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India and Software Patents

India has for a long time resisted the calls of patent inflation. Programs for computers are excluded from patentability in Indian law. The current examination guidelines of the Indian Patent Office on software sound similar to the traditional European approach which the European Parliament reconfirmed on 2003-09-24. However due to international pressure and a growing domestic patent movement, the limits of patentability have been eroding.

Annotated Links

Annotated Links

Indian Patent Office
Indian Patent Examination Guidelines of 2001: 2. Since the claims may be couched in terms which tend to obscure the fact that the invention relates to a computer program, it is always essential to analyse them, in the light of what is described and of the prior art, in order to identify the contribution to the art and hence determine whether this advance resides in, or necessarily includes, technological features, or is solely intellectual in its content.
For example, if the new feature comprises a set of instructions (program
, which may be formulated and presented in any one of a variety of ways, designed to control a known computer to cause it to perform desired operations, the computer being suitable for the purpose without special adoption or modification of its hardware or organization then, no matter whether claimed as a computer arranged to operate etc or as a method of operating a computer etc .Such a subject matter is not patentable and hence excluded from patentability.|3. If the implementation of a new program requires internal modification to a computer of such a nature that it may reasonably be regarded as a new computer then clearly a claim to this computer is not excluded, even though at first sight the invention may seem to relate merely to a program and the purpose of modifying the computer is subsidiary to this. The modification must however be inventive itself; if a computer is modified in a manner which is the obvious way of implementing the program, then the inventive contribution will still reside solely in the program itself.)
Individuals dominate software patenting: According to this article, some Indian patent lawyers are playing the "technical features vs software per se" trick and successfully obtaining software patents.
NASCOMM - IPR: Time to own it!: An Indian version of BSA advertising patent inflation, using the term "IPR" to create confusion with copyright.