Ramanraj K said on Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 06:58:22AM +0530,:

It was finally the Left that saved the day! Our thanks are due the Members of Parliament for restoring the status quo in respect of computer programs.

With all due respects to the efforts and the results, this is only half the battle. It now turns out that what are obviously s/w patents _are_ being issued. It seems that the trickis to draft the patent application in such a way as to evade the guidelines issued by the controller.

This deserves a deeper study.

On Thursday 24 Mar 2005 6:58 am, Ramanraj K wrote:

The Patents (Amendments) Bill was passed in the Parliament,

after

dropping clauses 3(k) and 3(ka) relating to computer

programs,

restoring the status quo. Computer programs are outside the

purview

of patentability.

http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=8096

<quote> It is proposed to omit the clarification relating to patenting

of

software related inventions introduced by the Ordinance as

Section

3(k) and 3 (ka). The clarification was objected to on the ground

that

this may give rise to monopoly of multinationals.

</quote>

FSF India lead an active campaign against the Patents

(Amendments)

Ordinance that introduced patentability for embedded software,

under

the leadership of Richard Stallman, Nagarjuna, Arun and others

here.

Holger Blasum, Christian Beauprez, and others at ffii.org made a

big

difference in strengthening the campaign.

Prabir Purkhayasta of Delhi Science Forum and Kiranchandra also helped in lobbying for this. we should also record our thanks to them. And also of course to Ramanraj who drafted our statement after lot of research.

Nagarjuna