Olivia Johansson, a patent attorney, and Sarah Lord, recently on secondment to HMRC’s patent box policy team, explore how the patent box regime might apply to software companies holding patents over products, services and processes.
The patent box legislation comes into force on 1 April 2013 and companies are reviewing how they can benefit from this new regime. Unsurprisingly there is some uncertainty on how this regime will apply in practice. In the software industry this is confounded by the fact that there is a misconception that software cannot be patented in Europe and this industry therefore cannot benefit from the patent box. This article discusses the background to patenting software and how the patent box applies to this industry.
The patent law
Section 1(2) of the UK Patents Act 1977 states that things consisting of ‘a scheme rule or method for performing a mental act...
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Olivia Johansson, a patent attorney, and Sarah Lord, recently on secondment to HMRC’s patent box policy team, explore how the patent box regime might apply to software companies holding patents over products, services and processes.
The patent box legislation comes into force on 1 April 2013 and companies are reviewing how they can benefit from this new regime. Unsurprisingly there is some uncertainty on how this regime will apply in practice. In the software industry this is confounded by the fact that there is a misconception that software cannot be patented in Europe and this industry therefore cannot benefit from the patent box. This article discusses the background to patenting software and how the patent box applies to this industry.
The patent law
Section 1(2) of the UK Patents Act 1977 states that things consisting of ‘a scheme rule or method for performing a mental act...
If you or your firm subscribes to Taxjournal.com, please click the login box below:
If you do not subscribe but are a registered user, please enter your details in the following boxes:
