INDIA
November 16, 2015
The Indian Patent Office has released its Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions with the purpose of providing a more uniform and consistent guidelines for the examination of patent applications in this field. The guidelines are available in English on the IPO's website.
The following may be highlighted: "a mathematical or business method or a computer program per se or algorithms" is not patentable. Some guidance has been provided for the interpretation of this section: "For being considered patentable, the subject matter should involve either: (a) a novel hardware, or (b) a novel hardware with a novel computer program, or (c) a novel computer program with a known hardware, which goes beyond the normal interaction with such hardware and affects a change in the functionality and/or performance of the existing hardware".
"A computer program, when running on or loaded into a computer, going beyond the "normal" physical interactions between the software and the hardware on which it is run, and is capable of bringing further technical effect may not be considered as exclusion under these provisions".