Can you patent software?

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Can you patent software? Video Transcript

The question is can you obtain a patent on your software-related technology? The answer is it depends. In the United States software technologies are patentable; inventive technologies if these have a technical character. So if it is a website, whatever the technical enabling aspects that the database architecture that enabled that technology might be patentable, if it is new and not obvious. There are different procedural and substantive rules depending on the country you wish to protect the technology in and software itself is generally not considered patentable unless it is new and not obvious and it is solving a problem that exists that has not been solved before or at least in the same way before. Copyright law is other way to protect software but it primarily protects against illegal distribution of the software such as copying of the software from one computer on the internet to the other.

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