Insurance inventions can be protected by patents in both Europe and Japan.

One of the barriers to getting effective worldwide patent protection for insurance inventions is the substantial differences between the US, European and Japanese patent laws regarding the patentability of business method inventions.  Representatives of the European and Japanese patent offices made presentations to help the attendees understand these differences and more importantly, how to use them to get effective patent protection.  The European requirements are discussed in more detail elsewhere in this Bulletin, but the bottom line is insurance inventions can be protected by patents in all three jurisdictions provided that there is at least some sort of technological component to the invention.

Watch out for “copyleft” infringement.

There was a lot of discussion at the conference about open source software and a new type of intellectual property related to it called “copyleft”.

 Most insurance inventions require innovations in software in order to be implemented on a large scale.  Copyleft is a new type of intellectual property that promotes innovations in software by encouraging the release of software as “open source”.  Open Source software is software where the source code for a particular program is made available to the public and the public is free to improve it, provided the improvements are also made available as open source.  A well-known example of open source software is the Linux operating system.

Copyleft refers to a body of specialized copyright licenses that are designed, among other things, to enforce the release of improvements as open source. 

Violating a copyleft can be just as disruptive to commercializing a new product as violating a patent.  Developers within many IT departments commonly incorporate open source software components into the proprietary software products they are developing if it can make that development go faster.  If the open source component is protected by a copyleft, then the company developing the proprietary software product may be obligated to make some or all of the source code of the proprietary software product available as open source.

The good news about copylefts is that, just like patents, they promote innovation by rewarding public disclosure of inventions.  It remains to be seen however, to what extent the insurance industry will be able to take advantage of this new type of intellectual property to promote its own innovations.

US Patent Reform Legislation.

Gerald J. Mossignhoff, former commissioner of the US patent office, and Q. Todd Dickenson, also a former commissioner of the US patent office, gave an overview of the pending US patent reform legislation and its prospects for passage.  More details of the legislation are elsewhere in this issue.  The consensus regarding the prospects for passage is that it’s pretty good.  The legislation is needed and has reasonably broad public support, special interest support, and administration support.  It may not get passed in 2005, but it has a reasonably good chance of being passed in 2006.