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Basics on Software Patents

<p>Software is included in the Intellectual Property category and it can be patented&period; The patent grants protection for developers of the software&period; The monopoly of the development&comma; improvement and distribution lies with the holder of the patent&period; In fact&comma; the patenting system is intended to encourage invention among software developers&period;  Property rights can be ensured and granted to the right individual or group of people&period; The jurisprudences related to software patents around the world emanate from the laws in the United States&comma; which is the pioneer of software patents&period; Software is a complex collection of computer languages that are interactive or run automatically in the background&period; The first patent for software was for solution to improve access of file storage&period; The patent was filed in 1962 by British Petroleum Company and it is intended to solve simultaneous linear equations&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>There have been raging controversies in other countries whether software developers should be given patent protection or not&period; Depending on the country or state&comma; you should check the details of software patenting&period; In some cases&comma; the software per se isn’t give protection&period; If your software needs a special hardware to work&comma; you need to make sure that the hardware is included in the patent as well&period; A good example&comma; is a special data recording software that works only with specific airplane black box&period; When the software and hardware are separated&comma; they will be useless&comma; because the software can’t be used on any other software solutions&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>There are concerns that software patents will actually end up hampering and harming creativity and productivity among software developers&period; Some of the software development methods and logics may needs to be re-used to achieve something&period; When the patenting system is too restrictive&comma; it would be possible for developers to modify&comma; improve and re-write computer software&period; A good solution to this problem is by using open source platform&period; As an example&comma; from the basis of Linux&comma; developers can create various flavours&comma; such as SUSE and Ubuntu&period; Software&comma; especially operating systems are very complicated&comma; so building it from scratch may take monumental effort&period; The complexity of the software could depend on the features and intended level of versatility&period; A fairly complex software could contain more than 5 million lines of code&period; Small pieces of features can be patented individually&comma; so things can be tricky for developers&period; A solution is to make different format of files&period; As an example&comma; PNG image format was developed to avoid infringing GIF patent&comma; while Ogg Vorbis format was made to prevent legal issues associated with MP3&period; However&comma; using new format could cause new issues&comma; such as compatibilities and familiarity&period; Existing platforms may not be able to handle the new format and even if it’s supported&comma; users may not be familiar with it&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Patent is needed due to the high costs of development and research&period; Software piracy is a common problem and copy protection is often inadequate to prevent unauthorized uses&period; Patent is more intended to prevent other developers for making something too identical with an existing software solution&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;

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