Members of the public will now be able to comment on pending patents by email, rather than needing to contact the patent office by post, the UKPO said this week. The public can comment on anything that could affect whether a pending patent should be granted, such as if the 'invention' is not new or is obvious, or if it is of a kind excluded from patent protection.
People are encouraged to submit evidence with their observations, such as information from a trade journal or academic paper that can prove the existance of 'prior art' that pre-dates the filing date of the patent application.
Sean Dennehey, the director of patents at the UKPO, said this initiative will help maintain patent quality. "For people in business, concerned about a rival's patent application, it means that they can give us evidence that will help ensure that patent protection is granted only for inventions which truly deserve it," said Dennehey.
David Chan, a developer at Clockwork Software Systems, said the initiative was positive, but warned that it will not help the software industry if the law on what can be patented is not clarified. A proposed change in the law, known as the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive, is currently going through a second reading by the European Parliament. In its current form, some are concerned that it could allow the widespread patenting of computer programs.
"This [UKPO initiative] can only help fight software patent applications where there was prior art or some other procedural irregularity. It does not help in the case where the only irregularity is the rules which allow software patents to be granted at all," said Chan.
"What is most needed is an EU directive which very clearly excludes software patents -- unlike the current text which is full of ambiguity and contradictions which can only help the large corporations with legal departments," he said.
More information on how to comment on a patent applications can be found here. The address for email submissions can be found here.
Patent applications filed in the UK can be found by searching for a publication number starting with "GB" on the Esp@cenet Web site. This search can be narrowed by using the "applicant" field to search for patents filed by a particular company, or by searching for particular keywords in the title of the application. Any patent found using this search should be checked against the UKPO status enquiry database to check whether it is still pending. The "patent number" from the Esp@cenet Web site records equates to the "publication number" in the UKPO database.
Talkback
The EU Elite must realise that it was moves like this, to legitimise the idea of Software Patents, with out public concent or developer oprooval that brought about the larger headache of a "No" to the EU constitution.
If we in the UK have a chance to vote it will be on issues such as the Software Patents Bill, REACH legislation and trade issues in the EU that will force me to vote No as well.
I'm Dutch and with about 60% of my fellow country men we voted NO to the EU constitution not because we're against an united Europa but mainly because the gap between EU politicians and EU civilians is too large. Thus leading to badly informed (influenced by the commercially motivated) politicians that are out of touch with the civilian population who thus see their opinion not or not enough represented within the ranks of those that make decisions.
In other words, the wrong people have too much uncontrolled power in the EU at the moment and are influenced by the wrong people as well. That has to change before Europa can unite or else Europa is just going to be a playground for big (overseas) organizations.
Until then there are still plenty of (political) possibilities to establish European spanning agreements that are truly benificial for Europa as a whole but with the added bonus that a wrong decision by some badly informed and clueless Brussel sprout can more easily be rejected or adjusted on an individual country basis.
In short: EU, first get your act together and then lead the way.