The Australian legal community has been waiting since June for the Australian Advisory Council on Intellectual Property (ACIP) to release its findings to the federal government.
A spokesperson for Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Tourism and Industry, Warren Entsch, said the report was now expected to be released in early December, five months later than expected.
The committee began reviewing in July 2002 submissions on intellectual property claims that encompass business systems -- most of which are implemented electronically -- from the IT industry and legal interests.
ACIP Secretary, Kay Collins, said in September that the committee had been slow in finishing its report as the largely voluntary group had difficulty completing the work alongside personal commitments.
However, Warren Entsch's office today conceded that an earlier report completed by the ACIP around July had hastily been sent back to the committee "for further consideration" in the light of reports of DE Technologies' controversial patent claim over international e-commerce transactions.
The announcement comes amidst a struggle on the part of global patent office and intellectual property authorities to deal with a slew of controversial claims over methods of conducting business on the Internet. The latest high profile case is AT&T's claim against eBay and its subsidiary PayPal.
AT&T Thursday claimed that the PayPal service is infringing on a patent it holds which describes a broad framework for conducting commercial transactions electronically with the assistance of a trusted intermediary.
According to ACIP research, lodgement of patents over business methods began to grow exponentially in parallel with the information technology boom of the mid-90s. They took off again sharply in 1998 after a landmark decision by a U.S. court deemed business methods patentable.
Philip Argy, senior partner in the Intellectual Property & Technology Group at law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques, and chair of the ACS' Economic Legal and Social Implications Committee, told ZDNet Australia that the impacts of that decision were now just starting to be felt at a commercial level.
Critics of current practices say patents over business processes are too broad, inhibit innovation and pose a high cost burden on Australian companies. Contrarily, opposing voices say business process patents must be protected to encourage innovation.
D.E. Technologies' patent bid triggered alarm in the Australiasian e-commerce community as it appeared to hand the company the right to demand in excess of US$10,000 in licensing and royalties from any Australian or New Zealand company conducting commercial transactions electronically across international borders.
The double-speak surrounding business process patents is increadible:
"business process patents must be protected to encourage innovation".
The innoviation in business processes that has occured in the past several thousand years seems to have happened without the benefit of patent. How come only IT business processes need "protection"? Absolute clap-trap.
AT&T never implemented their patent, so how did patenting the idea actually help innovation? All it does is stiffle anyone else attemtping to use similar ideas - which is quite contrary to the claimed benefit of patents.