PATENTING COMPUTER RELATED INVENTIONS IN ISRAEL
Foreword:
The issue of patentability of computer related inventions in the US,
Europe and Japan, is well known, and has been so for a number of years.
This matter had not really been tackled in Israel, however, until Israel
Patent Application No. 68409, filed by United Technologies Corporation,
went to appeal. Until then, no consistent position had been adopted by
the Israel Patent Office. Indeed, once the 68409 application was brought
to appeal, the prosecution of many computer-related cases was frozen
until the appeal was resolved.
The position in Israel is now similar to that of many other
=91enlightened=92 countries, such as those listed above.
While the following case appears to be an adoption of generally accepted
practice by the Israel system, it nonetheless makes for interesting
reading.
The Case:
The matter of COMPUTER RELATED INVENTIONS featured in the decision of
Judge Shalom Brenner in the Jerusalem District Court, in the matter of
United Technologies Corporation (Appeal 23194).
Interpretation of the following sections of the Israel Patents Law,
1967, was at issue:
Section 2. "The owner of a patentable invention is entitled to apply
for the grant of a patent in accordance with the provisions of this
law."
Section 3. "An invention, whether a product or a process, which is
new, useful and susceptible of industrial or agricultural application,
and which involves an inventive step, is a patentable invention."
Section 13. "The specification shall end with a claim or claims
defining the invention: Provided that each claim shall reasonably arise
out of the description contained in the specification.
The invention, which was the subject of Israel Patent Application No.
68409, related to a control and regulatory system for fuel supply to a
helicopter engine during flight, its main components being:
(i) physical components which frequently sample data e.g. airspeed,
height, engine rotations, rotor blades angle and the rate of fuel flow
to the engine; and
(ii) a computerized control unit which receives and programs the date