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Concept
Software patent
Summary
A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, libraries, user interface, or algorithm.
A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time, usually 20 years. These rights are granted to patent applicants in exchange for their disclosure of the inventions. Once a patent is granted in a given country, no person may make, use, sell or import/export the claimed invention in that country without the permission of the patent holder. Permission, where granted, is typically in the form of a license which conditions are set by the patent owner: it may be free or in return for a royalty payment or lump sum fee.
Patents are territorial in nature. To obtain a patent, inventors must file patent applications in each and every country in which they want a patent. For example, separate applications must be filed in Japan, China, the United States and India if the applicant wishes to obtain patents in those countries. However, some regional offices exist, such as the European Patent Office (EPO), which act as supranational bodies with the power to grant patents which can then be brought into effect in the member states, and an international procedure also exists for filing a single international application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which can then give rise to patent protection in most countries.
These different countries and regional offices have different standards for granting patents. This is particularly true of software or computer-implemented inventions, especially where the software is implementing a business method.
On 21 May 1962, a British patent application entitled "A Computer Arranged for the Automatic Solution of Linear Programming Problems" was filed. The invention was concerned with efficient memory management for the simplex algorithm, and could be implemented by purely software means. The patent struggled to establish that it represented a 'vendible product'.
Official source
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Ontological neighbourhood
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Proprietary software
Proprietary software is software that, according to the free and open-source software community, grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modifying it, and—in some cases, as is the case with some patent-encumbered and EULA-bound software—from making use of the software on their own, thereby restricting their freedoms.
Trade secret
A trade secret is an intellectual property that has inherent economic value because it is not generally known or readily ascertainable by others, and which the owner takes reasonable measures to keep secret. Types of trade secret include includes formulas, practices, processes, designs, instruments, patterns, or compilations of information. Intellectual property law gives the owner of a trade secret the right to restrict others from disclosing it. In some jurisdictions, such secrets are referred to as confidential information.
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ("share alike") terms, such as with its own GNU General Public License. The FSF was incorporated in Boston, Massachusetts, US, where it is also based. From its founding until the mid-1990s, FSF's funds were mostly used to employ software developers to write free software for the GNU Project.