UK courts reject Bloomberg software patent

The UK reinforced its opposition to software patents yesterday after the High Court rejected an appeal from news agency Bloomberg against the UK Patent Office, which had refused to grant a patent for the company's system of conveying financial information.

Justice Pumfrey upheld the Patent Office's decision that the Bloomberg program – which distributes financial data records to users working on different platforms by identifying the application the intended recipient is working on and delivering the data in the appropriate format – is pure software and therefore ineligible for a UK patent.

Anti-software patent activists are likely to welcome the move as further evidence of the UK's increasingly strict stance on software patents, which they claim would stifle innovation and ultimately drive up software costs.

John Collins, a partner at patent and trade mark attorneys Marks & Clerk, said that despite pure software patents being granted in the UK in the past this latest ruling appeared to confirm that an inventive hardware element must be involved for a company to obtain a patent on a computer-based invention.

However, he warned that such a stance could damage UK competitiveness because the country is now granting fewer patents for computer-based applications than the rest of Europe. "The less permissive approach by the UK examiners and courts represents a disincentive for British firms to develop technical solutions," he said. "Time and effort is unlikely to be wasted developing technology, such as Bloomberg’s new data delivery system, if it can be copied immediately by all and sundry in the UK."