Unfortunately, the interpretation of copyright law as applied to software has not yet reached a point of consistency, and the protection provided by copyright is relatively weak. In the latter case, non-original components were removed from the software before it could be protected by copyright. Patenting is becoming the method of choice for effective protection of original computer programs. Whereas a copyright protects an original work in the tangible fixed form in which it has been set down, a patent protects the creation of inventive concepts as well as their reduction to practice. A patent owner has the right to keep others from making, selling, or using a patented invention for twenty years from the filing date of the patent application.
Patents fall into three main classes, utility, design and plant.
Increasingly software is being described as a collection of processes, as a unique machine, or both, enabling the protection of the inventive concepts behind an original program. Getting the courts to shift towards this perspective has been a long road, and has generated a fair amount of confusion. The following cases highlight the gradual evolution of the legal mindset. In a pivotal case in 1946, Gottschalk v. Benson , an algorithm was rendered unpatentable, but only because there was no particular application defined for the algorithm. In 1981, in Daimond v. Diehr , the process claim for operating machinery using a computer was upheld as patentable.