> it's clearly stated that software is not applicable to patent
Given that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has been giving software patents a good deal of thought (not to mention issuing software patents) [1], I'd say the situation is anything but "clear".
In the US, patents on ideas, business processes, and algorithms are not allowed. However, there's a goofy (court approved) legal idea that software transforms a general-purpose computer into a single-purpose computer, and that transformation makes software patentable.
The general-purpose computer to single-purpose computer transformation cracks me up (and makes it obvious that the law doesn't necessarily have any relationship with reality): "by loading this program, a computer able to do many different things becomes a computer capable of doing a specific thing."
This isn't true in many cases after the Supreme Court decision Alice v. CLS Bank in 2014. Now we have a rule more like that in Europe, where some software is patent-eligible if it's sufficiently technical (e.g., something like RSA, or better cache management) and not patent eligible if it's not technical (e.g, CRUD apps, or new views on a database).
Thank you for the update. I wasn't aware of the Alice decision.
When I said "court approved" I meant Federal Circuit, as in Alappat ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Alappat#Majority_opinion ): "We have held that such programming creates a new machine, because a general purpose computer in effect becomes a special purpose computer once it is programmed to perform particular functions pursuant to instructions from program software."
On the one hand, several Supreme Court decisions appear to leave less room for software patents. On the other hand, I don't think the Supreme Court has an overall goal in mind. I believe the problem comes from the fact that the law prohibits patenting natural laws, but allows patenting the application of natural laws. It's hard to distinguish between those two ideas; and I believe impossible to distinguish between them when it comes to software.
> As far as I know, it's clearly stated that software is not applicable to patent
This is the beauty of intellectual property experts: they can reverse a very root concept, by changing few commas, and over-interpreting.
TL;DR: Software patents are forbidden (especially in Europe) "as such". It means that if you attempt to patent the "linked list" in software programming, this will be refused. But you can patent a "method of linking a set of abstract data together, using a numerical identifier as gathering medium". This is not rephrasing: what you are attempting to patent is NOT software - you can have a set of paper sheets, with a number on top of them, and form a linked set of data (printer documents). You could ALSO have a linked list in a computer program. But what you are attempting to patent is a more general concept, that CAN be represented as a piece of software. Of course, what you REALLY want to patent is the later.
Yes, yes, this is fraud. Legal fraud. Move along, nothing to see.
You can get a patent over software that is sufficient non-abstract. Where the line is drawn is extremely unclear. But there are valid software patents.
