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During several meetings from the late 1990s to 2000, the Trilateral
project defined the principal terminology and doctrines (on patentability
of “computer-implemented inventions”, including “computer-implemented
business methods”) which formed the basis for the European Commission’s
software patent directive and
were explicitely criticised and
rejected by the majority of the European Parliament.
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Japanese Patent Office:
old reports on Trilateral Project – includes comparative
reports of the three Patent Offices
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Saikine Report
of 2000 – Comparative Study of Software Examination Practise
of EPO, JPO and USPTO A study, based on example patents, on how the
world’s three most important patent offices evaluate claims related
to software, mathematics and business methods. It appears from this
that they are basically the same, but the EPO is slightly more willing
to grant broad and trivial software patents than the other two offices.
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EPO 2000/05/19: Examination
of business method applications – The EPO document which
introduced the term “computer-implemented invention”. This
is Appendix 6 of a report in which the EPO explains to the Trilateral
Commission (i.e. US and Japanese Patent Office) to what extent it has
made progress in working around the European Patent Convention so as
to make business methods patentable in Europe. This document became
the basis of the European Commission’s software patentability
directive proposal of 2002/02/20.
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INPI.pt Documento
de Consulta 2003/07/28 – The Portuguese Patent Office explains
its support for the European Commission’s directive approach,
saying (in our translation):
We approve the harmonised position of the US Patent Office (USPTO),
the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO)
concerning the patentability of these inventions (see Trilateral Technical
Meeting Study, Tokyo, June 2000), according to which technical features
are required in order for a computer-implemented business method to
be considered patentable. According to EPO and JPO these computer-related
technical features must be claimed explicitely, wheras according to
the USPTO it is sufficient if the claims implicitely refer to such
features. (Consideramos, também, equilibrada a posição harmonizada
dos Institutos de patentes dos Estados Unidos, do Japão e do Instituto
Europeu de Patentes relativamente aos critérios de apreciação da
patenteabilidade dessas invenções (…), para os quais são
necessárias características técnicas para que um método de negócio
implementado por um computador possa ser considerado patenteável (estas
características técnicas, relacionadas com o computador, têm que
ser expressas nas reivindicações, de acordo com os Institutos japonês
e europeu, enquanto que para o Instituto americano basta que essas
características estejam implicitamente expressas nas reivindicações).)
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Rocard counter-proposal on Computer-Aided
Inventions – In no. 1 of 22 “Cross-Partisan Compromise
Amendments”, the European Parliament’s rapporteur Michel
Rocard justifies his rejection of the term “computer-implemented
invention” as follows:
The concept of a computer-implemented invention is not used by computer
experts either, and in fact is not in wide use at all. It was introduced
in May 2000 by the European Patent Office (EPO) to justify the patenting
of “computer-implemented business methods” and bring EPO
practice into line with Japanese and US practice. The term “computer-implemented
invention” implies that solutions involving only generic computers
are patentable inventions. This idea is contrary to Article 52 of
the European Patent Convention, which states that algorithms, methods
for doing business, and computer programs do not constitute inventions
within the meaning of patent law.The directive can not be intended
to declare computer programs to be patentable inventions by presenting
them in some other wording.
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Trilateral cooperation has continued also through other fora that aim
to move step by step toward a uniform (or “harmonised”)
world patent system.
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