Computer Implemented Inventions Meeting at the DTI
On Tuesday (the 14th), I attended the meeting on Computer Implemented Inventions set-up by Lord Sainsbury and the Patent Office as a result of the large number of letters they received regarding the new European Directive on the Patentability of Computer Implemented Inventions. The meeting was chaired by Peter Lawrence, the Director of Policy at the Patent Office; also present were Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science & Innovation; Peter Hayward, a Divisional Director of Patents at the Patent Office; and Steve Probert, a Deputy Director at the Patent Office (who was involved in an interesting and topical discussion on the IEE site).
I wanted to post a summary here of the meeting from my perspective as someone involved in running a small business, particularly in light of the fact that most other such summaries are likely to come from people whose reporting of the issues is not always as accurate as one might wish and has tended at times towards scaremongering (actually, I just read ZDNet UK's article, which is a pretty terrible piece of journalism as it is inaccurate as well as coming across as biased; The Register did somewhat better, although their claim that the current position is based on U.K. case law is not entirely correct—it is based on a combination of EPO and U.K. case law).
The Patent Office also said that they were going to publish a transcript of the meeting on their website, which should be valuable material, provided it isn't taken out of context. As soon as I find it on their site, I'll put a link here.
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