List of software patents
This is a list of software patents, which contains notable patents and patent applications involving computer programs. Software patents cover a wide range of topics and there is therefore important debate about whether such subject-matter should be excluded from patent protection. However, there is no official way of identifying software patents and different researchers have devised their own ways of doing so.
This article lists patents relating to software which have been the subject of litigation or have achieved notoriety in other ways. Notable patent applications are also listed and comparisons made between corresponding patents and patent applications in different countries. The patents and patent applications are categorised according to the subject matter of the patent or the particular field in which the patent had an effect that brought it into the public view.
Business methods
| Number | Comments | Other family members | Earliest filing date |
| ' | This patent was at the center of a US Federal Circuit judgment in 1998 which confirmed that business methods implemented on a computer are patentable in the US since they produced a "useful, concrete and tangible result". The claims of the corresponding European patent application were rejected by the European Patent Office as relating to unpatentable subject matter. | 1991-03-11 | |
| ' | Amazon.com sued Barnes & Noble for violating its "One click buy" but the case was ultimately settled. Amazon has so far failed to obtain a similar patent in Europe. | 1997-09-12 | |
| ' | Although granted in several non-European countries, the patent application was refused as relating to excluded subject matter under UK law as being a method of doing business and a program for a computer as such. The case law developed in refusing this patent application forms the basis for the current practice of the UK Intellectual Property Office when deciding whether to grant patent applications involving excluded subject matter such as computer programs. The EPO have refused to search for prior art that might be relevant to the corresponding European patent application, stating that such a search would serve no useful purpose since the application solves no technical problem. | | 2000-11-23 |
| ' | Accenture sued Guidewire Software in December 2007, alleging their infringement of this insurance technology patent. Accenture alleged that Guidewire infringed the US patent protecting an insurance claims management technology that Accenture developed and licenses to the insurance industry. Intellectual property suits are not common in the insurance software market and this suit may represent a new front in the intellectual property wars according to one analyst. | 1999-05-04 |
Data compression
Data compression in general
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- - also granted as - now expired
Audio compression
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Image compression
Video compression
| Number | Comments | Other family members | Earliest filing - Grant dates |
| A Microsoft patent covering a method of encapsulating multiple streams of data into a data stream that is implemented in the Advanced Systems Format. The author of the open source video capture tool, VirtualDub, which is licensed under GPL alleged that an employee of Microsoft requested that he remove support for ASF from his program. The author has said that he does not have the money to pay for a license under the patent and that he would not take a free license that placed restrictions on future uses of his code in violation of GPL. | - | 1996-03-08 - 2000-03-21 |
Data encryption
| Number | Comments | Other family members | Earliest filing - Grant dates |
| A software patent describing the ground-breaking RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography, still used for secure communications today. | - | 1977-12-14 - 1983-09-20 |
Gaming systems
Image processing
- also granted as -
Internet tools
| Number | Comments | Other family members | Earliest filing - Grant dates |
| ' | Eolas successfully sued Microsoft for $521 million for the "browser plugin patent". | - | 1994-10-17 - 1998-11-17 |
| ' | British Telecom believed that this patent might cover web hyperlinks and tried enforcing it against Prodigy as a test case in British Telecommunications plc v. Prodigy. After costly litigation, a court found for Prodigy, ruling that British Telecom's patent did not actually cover web hyperlinks. | - | 1976-07-20 - 1989-10-10 |
| This patent is one of several owned Tumbleweed Communications and relates to a document delivery system that generates a unique URL for intended recipients of a document in order to deliver that document. Tumbleweed has licensed this and related patents in their patent portfolio to 29 companies. They have also filed several patent infringement lawsuits. All of the suits have been settled but full details of the settlements, including, in some cases, whether or not any license fees have been paid, have not been made available. Overall, however, Tumbleweed earns about 10% of its revenue from patent licensing and 90% of its revenue from selling products and services. | - | 1996-10-24 - 2001-02-20 |
Fair division
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Search engines
Telecommunications
User interfaces
- and related to
Miscellaneous
Notable due to proprietor hyperbole
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Notable due to misconception
- - Emoticon keyboard button patent application.