In practice, software ended up being covered by both schemes, partly due to actions by the U.S. Congress, including several references to software in the Copyright Act, and partly as a result of decisions by the Copyright Office, the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), and by judges. One could copyright one’s code and also gain a patent over the “non-obvious” novel and useful innovations inside the software. (In much of the rest of the world, software also came to be covered by copyright, though the status of patents over software was sometimes more obscure.) What can we learn from the history of the years since? A lot, it turns out, some not limited to the U.S., where intellectual property law often tends (for better or for worse) to disproportionately influence technology policy worldwide.

 

The words “by means of a computer” seem to be an incantation of magical power, able to transubstantiate the ideas and formulae of the public domain into private property. And, like the breaking of a minor taboo that presages a Victorian literary character’s slide into debauchery, once that first wall protecting the public domain was breached, the courts found it easier and easier to breach still others. If one could turn an algorithm into a patentable machine (by simply adding “by means of a computer”), then could one not turn a business method into something patentable by specifying the organizational or information technology structure through which the business method is to be implemented?

 

What can we learn from this history? First, we should realize that the mere decision to include a technology within a property regime is only the first in a sequence. As the copyright system showed with software, it is possible to trim protection so as to minimize overreaching. As the business-method patent decisions show us, we don’t always do it. Second, we should understand that we have some new methods of combining property rights and an open “commons” of raw material. The experience of free and open source software should be studied to see whether it has implications for new technologies. We need all the innovation tools we can get. Third, we should be mindful of the fact that much depends on the moment in the development of a technology when property rights begin to be rigorously applied. For better or for worse, property rights came fully to software at a point when no one would have thought of claiming the most fundamental building blocks—patenting the idea of a Turing machine or the precepts of Boolean algebra. The basics of the field were there for all to build upon. Will that be true with future technologies?

 

The proposed amendment of the existing IPC will integrate a more comprehensive and efficient strategies to respond to the upsurge of internet piracy and give recognition to the rights of research and experts, surveyors, authors of significant literature on technological advancements, performers, producers and broadcasters as accorded authors of the artistic and literally works; acknowledging their right to control or be compensated for which their works are enjoyed by others. It will also recognize the rights to distribution and rental, and rights to claim fees for certain forms of literature, broadcast or communication to the public, especially with regard to the trend on online sharing of files and documents.

 

The Law on Compulsory Licensing for Public Health will be submitted to the Council of Ministers "soon" and is expected to be passed by the National Assembly by the end of this year, Var Rath San, director of the Ministry of Commerce's Department of Intellectual Property Rights, which drafted the law, was quoted by the Phnom Penh Post as saying.

The law would bring Cambodia into line with the World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations allowing developing countries to bypass patents when importing and exporting drugs used to treat serious diseases such as malaria and HIV.