Patent Law has IT in a Tizzy

The patent office for the first time made a clear interpretation of the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2002 to mean that if a software has novelty, is inventive or tangible, and has proper technical effect or industrial application, it can be patented. The guidelines serve as a reference for officers in granting patents. Software product industry experts are against modifying the law to make computer programs easily patentable, arguing that innovation in the area is often incremental and programs are built on top of other programs.

They cautioned that if the guidelines are made into law, programmers will be barred from using a particular method to solve a problem without the permission of the idea's owner, like in the US. The new guidelines will make it easier for companies to file for software patents in India, but for startups, for whom innovation is critical, the upside is almost none. “We want Indian entrepreneurs to be focused on innovation and not litigation,“ said Venkatesh Hariharan, member of software product think-tank iSPIRT's software patents expert team. “We fear that these guidelines will open the floodgates for software patenting and the resultant litigation because software patents are the most contentious and litigated sector of patents in jurisdictions that allow it.“

Indian law excludes grant of patents to mathematical or business methods, algorithms and computer programs, which software industry body Nasscom has said was ambiguous. Software is protected through copyright.

To understand the difference between patents and copyrights, consider their implication in the music industry. A sequence of notes make music. A tune created using a sequence of notes is protected by copyright to prevent others from copying the tune and profiting from it. But acquiring a patent would bar other musicians from including or building on that sequence of notes to compose a new tune altogether. A musician would be forced to buy musical sequence licence. Similarly, thousands of instructions to the computer make up a program. Thousands of programs packaged together make a software. The unique combination of these program algorithms is protected by copyright law. While a patent protects an idea, a copyright protects the expression of an idea.

Although the Patent Act was passed in Parliament, the guidelines for its implementation and examination is set by the patent office and are subject to changes from time to time. The office released draft guidelines and invited comments before issuing its final guidelines on August 21.

The new guidelines allow companies to show innovation in just software, rather than in both software and hardware as was previously required. This also makes it easier to register a patent for technical innovation in a business method -the basis of most patents filed in the business process outsourcing industry.

“We feel that the recently issued (guidelines) will bring in software patents through the backdoor, and this is not good for the Indian software product ecosystem,“ said Hariharan of iSPIRT, who plans to meet with the patent office in the coming weeks.

Industry experts said the guidelines are problematic also because of the rapid pace of software development, often incremental.

Sauce for the Goose, Mr Indian Gander

There is little reason to believe that Indian software product developers will fare differently from foreign ones.Intellectual property rights are not an unqualified blessing, true. But as Indian IT moves to the next stage of development, it needs IPR protection. Only those who refuse to accept the need to evolve and want to stay in their little comfort zones of low effort need be scared of tighter IPR

The Economic Times, New Delhi, 7th Sept. 2015

Household debt up, but India still lags emerging-market economies: RBI

Although household debt in India is rising, driven by increased borrowing from the financial sector, it remains lower than in other emerging-market economies (EMEs), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its Financial Stability Report. It added that non-housing retail loans, largely taken for consumption, accounted for 55 per cent of total household debt.As of December 2024, India’s household debt-to-gross domestic product ratio stood at 41.9 per cent. “...Non-housing retail loans, which are mostly used for consumption purposes, formed 54.9 per cent of total household debt as of March 2025 and 25.7 per cent of disposable income as of March 2024. Moreover, the share of these loans has been growing consistently over the years, and their growth has outpaced that of both housing loans and agriculture and business loans,” the RBI said in its report.Housing loans, by contrast, made up 29 per cent of household debt, and their growth has remained steady. However, disaggregated data sho...

External spillovers likely to hit India's financial system: RBI report

While India’s growth remains insulated from global headwinds mainly due to buoyant domestic demand, the domestic financial system could, however, be impacted by external spillovers, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its half yearly Financial Stability Report published on Monday.Furthermore, the rising global trade disputes and intensifying geopolitical hostilities could negatively impact the domestic growth outlook and reduce the demand for bank credit, which has decelerated sharply. “Moreover, it could also lead to increased risk aversion among investors and further corrections in domestic equity markets, which despite the recent correction, remain at the high end of their historical range,” the report said.It noted that there is some build-up of stress, primarily in financial markets, on account of global spillovers, which is reflected in the marginal rise in the financial system stress indicator, an indicator of the stress level in the financial system, compared to its p...

Retail inflation cools to a six-year low of 2.82% in May on moderating food prices

New Delhi: Retail inflation in India cooled to its lowest level in over six years in May, helped by a sharp moderation in food prices, according to provisional government data released Thursday.Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based inflation eased to 2.82% year-on-year, down from 3.16% in April and 4.8% in May last year, data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) showed. This marks the fourth consecutive month of sub-4% inflation, the longest such streak in at least five years.The data comes just days after the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee cut the repo rate by 50 basis points to 5.5%, its third straight cut and a cumulative reduction of 100 basis points since the easing cycle began in February. The move signals a possible pivot from inflation control to supporting growth.Food inflation came in at just 0.99% in May, down from 1.78% in April and a sharp decline from 8.69% a year ago.A Mint poll of 15 economists had projected CPI ...

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