Patent Protection Of Computer Software Research

With the development of computer software industry, lawful protection of computer software is reinforced increasingly. At present, the measure to protect computer software all over the world usually adopt copyright law mainly as well as patent law, trademark law, commercial secret law etc.The formation of protect system mentioned above has its peculiar social historical reason. Copyright law protecting computer software has the congenital advantage of its nature, but it is always denounced by law circle that some inherent faults are hard to surmount. Computer software is not only a general writing material for common people's reading but also function as certain technology. And with the gradual development of software, its technical function has been stronger and stronger. Lots of software already combining with hardware have changed the physical property of hardware, so they may become the object of patent.What's more, along with the computer software development, software reusing, which is one of the most important solution of software crisis, was stepped forward hard under copyright protection of computer software. There is no need of registering and there is no need of announcing. The copyright protection of computer software comes into effect voluntarily, which makes software researchers hard to know the relative information of software development. Meanwhile, as software researchers dissection and analyze others software to found software database, they must copy some kinds of software inevitably. But from copyright protection's view, this kind of duplicate is been prohibited. All of these factors have caused considerable obstacle to the foundation of software database and the development of all the computer software industry.The patent protection of computer software has exceptional advantage in the aspect of software reusing. To protect the patent of computer software requires proposer to open their intelligence achievements after they get patented in order to be used, to be referred, to be innovated expediently by the public. So, it may avoid efficiently the repetitive development of software and may give software database aneasy condition for founding as well. At the same time, the monopoly right that patent law emphasized has obvious comparison with the exclusion right that the patent right endowed limitedly with the author, which can not only meet the exclusive requirements of software founder but can greatly arouse software researchers enthusiasm.Due to the fact that the development of computer software has an important position in knowledge economy society and there is inadequate protection in copyright, all of the countries have strengthened the patent protection of computer software coincidentally in recent years. It has been proved recently that many countries such as the USA, Japan and Europe countries had given a great number of patents to copyrightThis article will analyze software reusing and point out the necessity of patent protection through analyzing software development and the appearance of software crisis. After analyzing the legal provisions and changing of software patent in developed countries such as the US, Japan and Europe countries, combining with the theories and practice of Chinese software patent protection, this article try to bring out a suggestion of how to perfect Chinese patent legislation, in the hope of benefiting the development of national computer software industry.