Patent claims relating to a virus-protection software to filter e-mail and electronic files are merely generic computer functions and not covered by a patent-eligible concept, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled. In affirming a decision of the federal district court in Seattle, Washington to dismiss the patent infringement case brought…

The European Patent Office (EPO) is receiving ever increasing numbers of patent applications that include a ‘programmed computer’ as a key part of the described invention.  Moreover, this growth in filings is being seen in technical fields that are not traditionally considered to be computer-centric.  For example, according to EPO statistics, 40% of new patent…

For the first time, the European Patent Office has published guidelines on the patentability of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. The guidelines (G-II 3.3.1) came into force on 1 November 2018. As the guidelines provide, AI and ML are “based on computational models and algorithms for classification, clustering, regression and dimensionality reduction,…