GregNews on Australian patlawyer report

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

Someone sent to Greg Aharonian's Patent News

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

more details about the report of an australian patent lawyer institute
which said that "all technologies are the same" and therefore the "status
quo" of granting business method patents had to be accepted in Australia.

There is also a link to the study itself.  At first sight it looks as if 
they had repeated the European Commission's "Intellectual Property 
Institute" study of 2000 

        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/indprop-ipi00/

while avoiding the mistake of asking an economist to participate.

--------------------------

    -  BUSINESS METHOD PATENTS IN AUSTRALIA

Dear Greg

After your recent high profile in the pages of the CIPA journal in the
UK, thought you may be interested in an update from downunder.

Back in 2002 there was an ACIP (Australian Council on IP) issues paper
on the patenting of business methods and systems here. After extensive
consultation and beard-stroking, ACIP presented its report to Government
last week. Links to the report and related materials are given below.

To briefly summarise the report, ACIP found there was little conclusive
evidence to suggest that patents in this area either suppress
innovation, or particularly encourage it. There is therefore no strong
argument to suggest that business method inventions should be treated
any differently to other inventions, so the existing regime will
continue. Not unlike the situation in the US.

ACIP's report did recommend specific improvements relating to the
examination process at IP Australia (searching non-patent literature,
special training for examiners in this field) and to the information
made available to the public (ie easy searching of business method
patent publications).

ACIP released an
<http://www.acip.gov.au/library/Business%20Systems%20Issue%20Paper.PDF>
issues paper in July 2002 to seek the views of interested parties.
ACIP received a number of
<http://www.acip.gov.au/bus_submissions/bus_submissions.htm> written
comments, and consultations were held in Melbourne and Sydney in late
2002.

ACIP recently presented its report to the Government.

Federal Industry Parliamentary Secretary, Warren Entsch released the
report on 25 February 2004. The
<http://www.acip.gov.au/library/bsreport.pdf> report and
<http://www.acip.gov.au/library/bsmedia.pdf> media release are now
available.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
300,000 votes 2000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/