Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Software patents under the Patent Cooperation Treaty


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was keep. — CharlotteWebb 00:10, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Software patents under the Patent Cooperation Treaty
COMMENT Request for deletion has been withdrawn by nominator following excellent work in improving article as discussed below.GDallimore 14:35, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a meaningless article. Patents cannot be granted through the PCT procedure, it is merely a centralised system for prosecuting patent applications which must then be turned into individual patent applications before each national office in question who will then decide, under their own laws, whether or not to grant a patent. Article is therefore misleading and unecessary in view of existing articles on software patents under US, UK, EP and JP law. Have nevertheless copied text into Patent Cooperation Treaty article in case something useful can be salvaged from the discussion of the various Rules and Articles of the PCT that are mentioned. Numerous redirect pages to this article should also be deleted. GDallimore 15 February 2007
 * Article content has been merged. The GFDL requires keep.  Uncle G 14:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Only some of the content has been merged because it mentioned a couple of interesting facts about the PCT which might be useful in the PCT article. The relevance of these facts to the AfD is zero because the article itself is meaningless. GDallimore 14:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Whether some or all has been merged is irrelevant. You merged the text.  The GFDL requires that the article therefore be kept.  It's as simple as that.  Uncle G 19:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Let me give an example as I fear I'm not explaining this properly. Say I create an article called "Blah". The content of that article is little more than "blah, blah, blah", but in the middle of the article is an inciteful, referenced section about the works of Mozart. I want to keep the bit about Mozart and merge it into the existing Mozart article, but the article as a whole is clearly up for deletion. Are you saying that merging the Mozart bits into Mozart means the rest of the article cannot be deleted? Surely not. I feel that this is a comparable case. The article, and the title of the article was meaningless and no record of it should remain on Wikipedia, even though some intelligent and well-versed contributors referenced interesting parts of the PCT in a (failed, in my view) attempt to make the article as a whole make sense. GDallimore 19:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that merging the Mozart bits into Mozart means the rest of the article cannot be deleted? Surely not. That is exactly what the GFDL requires. See &sect;4.  The edit history must be kept.  Uncle G 21:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see where the GDFL says any such thing. On the contrary, it suggests merging as a resolution to many issues, with the article then being reduced to a redirect. However, the only reason for keeping even a redirect is because of the links from 9 articles which would then be broken. Since the only thing which can be said about the subject is "the PCT doesn't say anything about the whether software can be patented", a better solution would be to delete the links themselves. Tim B 20:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a link to Deletion policy. The GFDL can be found at Text of the GNU Free Documentation License, which is linked to by every single page that you've read here.  Please familiarize yourself with the copyright licence under which you and all other editors are making contributions.  Uncle G 21:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Uncle G is correct. According to the GDFL the best that can happen is that the page should be redirected to where the majority of the information moved, as the edit history will be retained in the redirect page history. Therefore Redirect as I don't think it should be kept.--Dacium 22:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't actually care about the fate of this page (that is, redirect or delete - I don't think it ought to remain in its current form), but that is a nonsensical reading of the licence as it applies to Wikipedia. The current version of Patent Cooperation Treaty contains none of the text from this article except for the quote from Article 27, which is, of course, not an original part of the contribution where it was added and therefore cannot be subject to the licence. The current PCT article section is not even a derivative work of the article since the remainder of the text was written from scratch, the only common themes, aside from the quote, being the general concept that someone might be interested in whether the PCT had any provisions on the substantive questions of what is patentable in a Contracting State and the fact that any useful statement of this must necessarily refer to Rule 67 and might refer to software patents as being a relevant example. If I understand your interpretation of GFDL, a person could prevent the deletion of any page by copying some of the text into another article and saying that even if it is immediately deleted again, it will remain available through the history of that page and consequently the original source page needs to be kept so that the history of the text can be seen. That would be a nonsense for text which was generally felt not to be needed at all in Wikipedia and was available only because it was inconvenient to delete sections of history of a different article (and near-impossible where the text was not deleted by the very next revision). Tim B 10:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. Agree that article was meaningless for reasons stated. Only relevance even to Patent Cooperation Treaty was to highlight the fact that the PCT is neutral on whether this and other subject matter is patentable but allows an exclusion from international search and examination. Tim B 18:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC) Keep: As rewritten, I can see a place for this article in a series about software patents (I am doubtful about whether series form is the most effective way of presenting the issue, but it fits in). It still needs quite a lot of revision though - I would agree with GDallimore that Rules 39 and 67 are not (and cannot in view of Article 27(5)) be about the patentability of software according to the PCT. Rather, they are a statement about the limited processing of international applications relating to certain subject matter during the international phase, depending on whether a particular International Authority would refuse to process it under its national law (see the agreements between the International Authorities and the International Bureau for the specific link with national systems). It's not an article that I'm likely to bother attempting to improve in the near future though. Tim B 21:51, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. I have entirely rewritten the article, highlighting the practical, historical and interpretive significance of the topic. The article is verifiable, provides sources, and the mere fact that the PCT would be "neutral" about the topic is a meaningless reason for nominating the article for deletion. Actually, the PCT is not neutral at all about the topic, as explained in the article (but even if it was, that would not mean nothing). In addition, if there is a consensus (see current debate), rename to Patentability of software under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (indeed the PCT does not grant patents, so that renaming the article could be appropriate). --Edcolins 01:29, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The content is largely fine, but the open para and the title are both still wrong - and opening para highlights the reason I voted this article for deletion in the first place. Article says: "There are two provisions in the Regulations annexed to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) that directly relate to the patentability of computer programs." This is not correct. There are no provisions that relate to the patentability of computer programs. All these provisions say is that, when it comes to computer programs (and other subject matter) ISAs/IPEAs don't have to search/examine such applications. This is not a comment on their patentability since the PCT does not (and may not) comment on whether or not such things should be patentable. As the article states "Article 27(5) PCT provides that, as far as substantive conditions of patentability are concerned, national and regional patent laws prevail". This content is still useful but would be better put in a more general article such as Search and examination procedure under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Current article still needs deleting, or re-directing to newly title article if GFDL will not permit deletion. 18:07, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I respectfully don't agree with you. IMHO, the sentence "There are two provisions in the Regulations annexed to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) that directly relate to the patentability of computer programs" is correct. says "The objective of the international preliminary examination is to formulate a preliminary and non-binding opinion on the questions whether the claimed invention appears to be novel, to involve an inventive step (to be non-obvious), and to be industrially applicable", so that a preliminary opinion on patentability is provided during an international examination during the PCT procedure.  and  relate to this preliminary opinion (written opinion of the ISA or examination by IPEA), and can have a direct impact on the outcome of the search or examination and therefore relate to patentability. By the way, the outcome of the search and examination are now called "International Preliminary Report on Patentability (Chapter I or II of the PCT)". The definition of "to relate" is "to have some relation", which does not necessarily mean "contain", "comprise", "include", "is included", ... The relation implied by the verb "relate" in the first sentence is explained in detailed in the article, making the sentence correct IMHO. I have removed "directly" though, which was not necessary. --Edcolins 20:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Geoff, Tim, I have reworded the intro (right, the original wording was clumsy...). I hope this is fine now. I suggest to rename the article Computer programs and the Patent Cooperation Treaty. A more neutral and precise title is in order. --Edcolins 14:15, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Anyway, I think disputing the title and one sentence of the article is nowhere near sufficient to delete the article. You state "The content is largely fine" and then "Current article still needs deleting, (...)". I have some difficulty conciliating these two affirmations. --Edcolins 21:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Just had an edit conflict here after seeing your edit to the main article! the new version is so much better. I'll withdraw my AfD. GDallimore 14:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.