Intellectual property law provides a number of avenues to
protect investments that innovators make in developing and
marketing software. Securing one or more intellectual
property rights is critical in acquiring and maintaining an edge in
competitive markets.
Patents, as an example of one intellectual property right that
may be suitable for protecting software innovations, provide the
broad right to exclude others from making, using and selling an
invention for a period of up to twenty years.
In recent years, the Canadian Patent Office and various courts
in the United States have taken the stance that certain software
innovations, for example business methods that are implemented in
software that is operated on a computer,
do not warrant patent protection. As
a further twist, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal
in Canada (Attorney General) v. Amazon.com,
Inc. found that software patents, or business method
patents, can be eligible for patent
