Hoffmann Eitle - München, London

Patent Protection of Software Simulators: Practice at the European Patent Office and Open Questions

Author(s): Michele Baccelli, Mitsuyoshi Hiratsuka

Michele Baccelli, Patent Attorney and member of Hoffmann · Eitle's electrical engineering group, and Mitsuyoshi Hiratsuka, Associate Professor at the Department of Intellectual Property Strategy at the Graduate School of Management of Science and Technology of Tokyo University of Science, co-authored a publication on patent protection of certain software inventions in the Journal of the Japanese Group of AIPPI (Vol. 54, No. 4, 2009, 178-190, in the Japanese language).

The authors discuss a number of decisions of the EPO Boards of Appeal on the topics of software simulators, which can be regarded as a particular technical field falling within computer implemented inventions. The article also contains a reference to the pending Enlarged Board of Appeal case G 3/08 (patentability of computer programs) with general comments on possible impacts on the patenting of software inventions. It follows a first article by the same authors published by AIPPI Japan in 2008, which was directed to decisions on the topic of computer implemented inventions in general.

For more information on ordering this publication please visit www.aippi.or.jp.