no invention concept in UK Patent Act sec 1

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

At

        http://swpat.ffii.org/players/uk/

I argue that the UK Patent Act deviates from the EPC in a way that
makes the word "invention" mean something else than in the EPC, namely
any kind of idea, whether technical or not.  What was perhaps meant
for clarification back in 1977 may have later become a cause of
confusion in the european software patentability debate.  When the
UKPO proposes to reword Art 52.2-3 to "the following are not
inventions, unless in their inventive step they make a technical
contribution to the state of the art", they are, in EPC terminology
actually just saying 

        "The following are not inventions, unless they are
        inventions".

This is because in the EPC terminology, "invention" is a synonym of
"technical contribution".  But in the UK Patent Act it is not.

The CEC/BSA directive proposal seems to follow the british usage of the
words, which is no wonder, given that the leading people at the CEC
Industrial Property Unit are John Mogg and Anthony Howard and that the
british usage is based on a somewhat natural misunderstanding, namely
an undefined colloquial use of "invention".

Any comments, additions or corrections are welcome.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608   
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
100,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/