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Re: [ossig] Software Patents Already In Malaysia?
I mentioned before that Malaysia's Patent law 1983 was modified to
enable utility patent, which essentially means you can patent a
method/process which is basically what software patents are all about.
So now I am wondering does Malaysia actually recognize software patent
or not ? If that is the case then the statement the local OSS group
made about 'Malaysia does not recognize software patent' should be
clarified. During the UM RMS talk even MAMPU said at the moment
Malaysia does not recognize software patents, but from what we dug out
so far, it seems not the case ?
Malaysia is a WTO member since 1995, and it seems the 1983 patent act
was modified to accomodate TRIPs policy in 1997, and again modified in
2000, I forgot what's the 2000 modification.
It seems that we already have software related patents.
It confirms my fears because I know a few companies in Malaysia already
claiming to have patents in their software related processes. The
problem now is we do not have access to Malaysia's patent database,
because it is not transparent and you need to pay for it. I wonder if
the database contains the similarly imported software patents you can
find in Singapore's epatents website.
I couldn't stress enough, we need a lawyer on the OSS side.
It gets a little tiring having to do all this digging up ourselves.
We need to put the doubts away once and for all so that a more clear
and focused objective can be established on how to deal with these
issues. Well, I guess being late is better than being totally ignorant
of what's happening.