1Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Unit for Research and Development of Information Product (CSIR-URDIP), 85/1, Jopasana, Paud Road, Kothrud (Near Vanaz Engineering Company), Pune-411038, India
*Email id: venkat@urdip.res.in
Software patent is a ‘patent on any performance of a computer realised by means of a computer program’. A computer consists of various hardware components and self-contained software, which provide the entire shuttle with computerised monitoring and control. Currently, software patents are patentable in many countries, except in India. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has defined the International Patent Classification (IPC) code for various technologies. According to the Eighth Edition of the IPC system, the IPC code for patents covered under the software patent is G06. Although India is very strong in software development and export, our Indian IT companies are not fully aware of where they stand on software intellectual property (IP) protection. Therefore, there is a need to conduct a study to identify a global patent landscape on software patents. An IP study has been conducted to examine the current global patent landscape of companies having software patents from years 2001 to 2011. Patents search was conducted in commercial value-added patent databases, using the IPC code as the main search criteria. Companies active in patents filing with respect to various technology areas were listed and correlated. The potential markets open to software patents have been found using family patent information. This study finds competitiveness of Indian IT companies with respect to global software companies having patents on software.
Software Patenting, International Patent Classification (IPC) Code, Patent Search, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), IT Companies
