It takes years to design and develop software products, but not hard to get the permission to copy, if they have not been patented.

It was developed with an idea or an innovative process, a prototype, or rather it over? They are excited and want to bring it into the market and test? Wait a bit, because you must protect your intellectual property.

It takes years to design and develop software products. However, if the product attributes are clearly defined, it does not take significant efforts to reflect the software on one platform or another language if they have not been patented.

If a copyright protects a new software product idea or process? The copyright of the software only protects the exact copy of the software code. The copyright does not protect one another, the basic processes reproduce, functional aspects, or the idea of the software. In addition, a copyright no certainty if a similar code developed is proved to be independent. Patents, on the other hand provide unbreakable protection for software products and processes.

The granting of a patent for a support program of the software products or processes on its holder the right, others from making, using or selling software to prevent perform similar functions. Put simply, protects a software patent software products and innovative processes.

The evaluation of a software product is always dependent on the strength of its patent portfolio. Software patents level playing field between small and large companies software products. A small software company with patents of such tip that Research In Motion is a significant presence in the market or domain command.

A start with a strong patent portfolio can carve a market niche and position themselves safely. Take the case starting in Bangalore, text analysis is based. Focused on the area of contextual search engine, the start-up developing a strong portfolio of patents. Madan Pandit, CEO of Google Analytics detects said: “We filed for software patents give us the confidence to the markets of Internet search with a large and established players to give”

Alan. Kay, the inventor of the subject of programming, said: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Organizations, whether large or small, use of patents as a means to protect their inventions. For example, Microsoft holds about 5,000 patents and 40,000 IBM patents. Ca. 145 000 software patents have been issued by the U.S. Patent Office and some 17 000 new patents are granted each year.

trade secrets can be used to protect an idea in some sectors. Coco Cola Inc., for example, claims its membership in Coca-Cola as a trade secret. However, it is difficult to maintain software process can be manipulated as a trade secret mainly because of the innovative idea into a software product reverse. An important part of the intellectual property of a software product is exposed to the release of this new product. There is a direct and transparent relationship between the functional aspect or functionality of the software and the internal processes of the software requires less effort to reverse engineer the product.

The scope of intellectual property that can be detected by a software patent is important in the procurement of software patents for inventions that describe the physical components, or the function it performs, new and non-obvious. Software alone is not patentable, but the functions it performs are patentable. The machine, process or action of the preparation with the aid of the software is patentable. Some examples of software processes are patentable technology publishing, control functions, the collection of features, software and interactive technology-user operating system. Business methods and mathematical algorithms, the new manipulation of language-specific code for a given result are also patentable. The software processes up, business methods and mathematical algorithms mentioned covers almost everything you can imagine in the high tech industry.


Evaluation of IP