The New Zealand Government is backing a Patents Bill, which is approaching the final stages of its progress through Parliament. It renders software unpatentable, but Commerce Minister Simon Powell has said that inventions with "embedded software" will be patentable once post-legislation regulations have been drawn up.
The world of intellectual property is divided on whether or not software should be protectable with patents. Patents for software are commonplace in the US but less so in the EU and are not usually allowed in the UK.
