Software Patents, early 1990′s

October 22, 2008
Intellectual Property News and Interesting Facts

In the early 1990s, the US Federal Circuit (the highest court for patent matters other than the Supreme Court) tried to clarify when a software related invention was patentable.

The court stated that the invention as a whole should be examined. Is the invention in actuality only a mathematical algorithm, such as a computer program designed to convert binary-coded decimal numbers into binary numbers?

If so, then the invention is not patentable. However, if the invention utilizes the computer to manipulate numbers that represent concrete, real world values (such as a program that interprets electrocardiograph signals to predict arrhythmia or a program that analyzes seismic measurements), then the invention is a process relating to those real world concepts and is patentable.