On 26th April 2020, we are celebrating World Intellectual Property Day, on this occasion let us analyse the effect of one of the major controversial concepts in the IPR. That is about the Computer Software. Whether Computer Software should be granted Patent protection or Copyright protection? The world was divided into two categories: Pro-Patent protection and Pro-Copyright protection. In this article we shall not go into detail about the above question. But we shall analyse the consequences of Copyright protection for Computer software.
A copyright protection when compared to patent protection, the term of Copyright protection is lifetime plus 60 years whereas the term of protection for Patents is just 20 years. This is a major advantage of having Copyright protection over computer software. Many IT giants have been benefitted by this and thus also avoiding of renewal of protection which is a major burden. Secondly, registering a copyright is much easier and you can get your software registered within 4 months of application whereas the time taken for the patent registration is much more than 4 months. Therefore the time taken for the registration has also played a vital role and that’s the major reason why most IT companies are benefitted by it.
There has been a long debate going on whether computer software is to be granted a copyright protection or patent protection. But the Berne Convention of 1971 made it clear that computer software being a literary work and therefore comes under the copyright protection. The convention also laid down that if the software has an inventive step and an industrial application then the software can be patented. Today with computer software being granted copyright protection has led to increasing number of copyright applications, therefore gradually and effectively reducing the piracy of the software in the digital platform.