Introduction
Software development is a field that witnesses various types of
innovation. Some of the innovations may be regarded as technical
innovations, while others may be non-technical in nature. However,
often technical innovations and non-technical innovations are
intertwined, whereas patent protection is accorded to inventions
that are technical in nature. Therefore, patent office of various
jurisdictions have faced challenges while examining software
inventions, or what is generally known as Computer Implemented
Inventions (CII).
Among many jurisdictions, India and the European Patent
Convention (EPC) have statutes for preventing non-technical
inventions from being patented. One may be tempted to even say that
India leans towards the EPC approach of dealing with CII, both in
terms of statute and patent office guidelines. However, in India
the guideline for dealing with CII has been evolving over the
years.
