Software patents in Bioinformatics

Software patents in Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics has published papers describing new software for over 20 years (Nilsson and Klein 1985). During this time the world of software has changed considerably particularly with the irresistible rise of initiatives to build freely accessible software as has opening access to data resources. The Internet and the Web have also changed the way we use and distribute software. This social an...

Recent Patents on Bioinformatics in Drug Research

The present invention is in the field of bioinformatics, particularly as it pertains to gene prediction. More specifically, the invention relates to the probabilistic analysis of nucleic acid sequences for the determination of coding features, including determination of state probabilities for each nucleotide in a nucleic acid sequence, determination of coding strand, determination of open read...

Software Patents in Europe

This is only one small example of the fatal impact of ambiguous European regulations on software patents. European software industry faces an almost crushing competition from the United States and Japan. The competitors have been familiar with software patents for several years and are able to use the means of patent protection to reach their business goals. As long as the European software ind...

Software Patents Pending?

Recent twin decisions of the European Patent Office's Technical Board of Appeal have shifted its stance on software patents significantly. In this paper, I explore the background to this shift and suggest that the mindset to software patents enshrined in the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) is already being introduced ahead of formal amendment of the Europ...

Patents for software?