Australia ended 2016 flipping through the pages of the Productivity Commission’s final Inquiry Report on Australia’s Intellectual Property Arrangements. In general, the Commission considers that IP rights encourage innovation, but are not always necessary for it and can often be used harmfully. The proposed changes are aimed at balancing the interests of rights holders with…

Myles Jelf (Bristows LLP) talks about the difficulty with software patents. The difficulty arises from a need to identify the dividing line between the pure algorithm which should not be patentable and a technical invention which happens to use a computer. There are three different definitions between the UK, EPO and theUS. The EPC Article…