New Zealand: new bill on patenting software

New Zealand's Parliament has voted a bill that according to which computer programs are not considered inventions and are therefore ineligible to patent protection. However, the text of the bill is flexible enough to provide some paths. 

Particularly, the wording adopted by the Parliament prevents anything from being an invention only to the extent that a claim in a patent relates to a computer program as such.  Therefore the New Zealand approach appears to be analogous to the European one according to which an exclusion of computer programs "as such" is not an exclusion of patents on software inventions that make a technical contribution. 

New Zealand's position is therefore far from an absolute abolition of software patents, rather it can be mostly considered as a victory for those promoting, not those opposing, software patents.