The UK High Court has decided to change the practice of the English Patent Office to automatically reject patent claims when relating to computer program products. Read about it on IPKat . This may hopefully shift the UK and then the European preconception that the resulting products of computer programs "manufactured" by scientists and software companies are IP that is protection worthy. Of course, that does not mean that computer programming products claims are generally allowed by the UK Patent Office from now on - but it is better than nothing :-).