According to the Canada Intellectual Proprty Office (CIPO), one can file for a patent if the invention is new, useful and inventive. The Office defines "inventive" as showing ingenuity and not obvious. The Office states that an invention can be a product, a composition, a machine, a process or an improvement on any of them. It does not make specific mention of software patents.

When researching software patent legislation in Canada, I discovered that New Zealand had banned software patents in 2013. The law states that "a computer program is not an invention" and therefore cannot be protected by a patent. The passing of the law was considered highly conducive to innovation in the technology sector in NZ. It reminded me of the reflection Soran Ibrahim made in his Week 5 reflection on intellectual property, where he made the point that protection of IP is necessary to reward those behind the ingenuity. I do not disagree with this perspective. However, patenting algorithms would significantly impact the development of applications. I can just imagine a patent troll patenting basic building blocks in programming, such as sorting algorithms – a nightmare for every computer science student!

According to CBC News (2013), software patents are dealt with on a case by case basis in the courts in Canada and the US. The waters seem pretty murky but I believe that a blanket statement that software cannot be patented may be a bit risky in the sense that someone may develop an algorithm or a piece of code that is highly unique and ingenious, but having no ability to patent or protect it could potentially result in years of work being immediately considered open source, leaving the creator with no real say.

References

CBC News. (2013). New Zealand bans software patents. CBC News. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/business/new-zealand-bans-software-patents-1.1402823

Government of Canada. (2015, Feb 02). A Guide to Patents. Retrieved from Canadian Intellectual Property Office: http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/h_wr03652.html