A US Federal appeals court has handed down what is being seen as a landmark ruling on just what can be patented in the grey area where hardware interacts with software, by deciding that the Patent & Trademark Office was wrong to turn down an application for a patent from Tektronix Inc. The court recognised that when a computer program is loaded into a computer, it sets a lot of switches and connects a lot of components and literally makes a new circuit, technology patent attorney Peter Trzyna of Chicago firm Keck Mahin & Cate told the Wall Street Journal. At isuewas a rasterising system for putting graphics on a screen developed by a Tektronix engineer. The Patent Office appeals panel decided that the invention merely described mathematical formulae, which can’t be patented, but the appeals court ruled that while it relied on formulae, it was a specific machine to produce a useful, concrete and tangible result.
