Splicing Software Patent Definitions

Techdirt:

We've already covered how the EU decided to ignore its own requests to restart the debate over software patents, after discovering that many who had originally voted for it were mislead about the impact of software patents. It looks like some are at least trying to mitigate the damages -- but are discovering it's not as easy as you might think. Over in the UK, they put together a workshop to see if they could come up with a way to just patent 'technical innovations' as opposed to just basic process or concept innovations. The fact is, when you're trying to 'define' innovation, you're already in trouble. The whole point of innovation is that it isn't quite definable. Then trying to classify innovation and put it into various buckets (technical, non-technical) is only asking for more trouble down the road.