Software patents in the UK and Europe are actually quite a complex issue, although Canonical have publicly lobbied against them. I'll just shamelessly repost a

Software patents in the UK and Europe are actually quite a complex issue, although Canonical have publicly lobbied against them. I'll just shamelessly repost a previous comment of mine: Software patents are not entirely avoided in the EU, just to be clear. Quoting a little from an essay I had to write, although “programs for computers” are excluded by Article 52 of the European Patent Convention (1963), inventions that include an inventive step and solve a technical problem by the utilisation of a computer program have been upheld on appeal, for example in the case of Microsoft Corporation (data transfer with expanded clipboard features. T 0469/03 - 3.5.01, (URL now dead : http://www.epo.org/law-practice/case-law-appeals/recent/t030... http://www.epo.org/law-practice/case-law-appeals/recent/t030...) They might tell us that computer programs can't be patented, but their courts say otherwise - including states involved in the upcoming European Patent (for those unaware, currently EU states choose which European Patent Office patents to accept, the European Patent will synchronise all states except Spain and Italy). Actually the situation in Europe is quite similar to America - software isn't part of their patent legislation literature either; but such patents have been upheld repeatedly.