ONE FIFTH OF SOFTWARE PATENTS ARE HELD BY SMALL FIRMS.

Some 20% of patents for computer-implemented inventions (CII) were granted to SMEs between 1998 and 2004 and this proportion remained constant during the period reviewed, according to a study published on June 8 by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) (1). Half of the SMEs that secured European patents over the period are based in the United States and Japan, while around 1,200 European SMEs were also granted patents, roughly the same figure as the number of businesses in the Slovenian IT sector. The report indicates that there is no fundamental difference between software patents granted in the United States and CII patents granted by...