I’m not a lawyer, but my former Company (I’m now retired) inserted hundreds of man years into developing a product. When that happens, you have a close focus on how to protect the Intellectual Property you developed.
In general, copyright in the works belong to the author of a tangible work, or (as is normally the case) their assignee. ‘Author’ here means the person who gave it that tangible form e.g. the programmer. (I could or course be out of date and wrong)
However in the UK you can’t normally protect a process or some innovative piece of intellectual work by patent (unless it also involves a chunk of hardware) So you cannot patent what a program does, nor an idea, but only claim ownership of the IP in the instance of its implementation, as manifest in an original tangible work involving a ‘technical step’.
The US is totally different.
The other key factor is what’s known as ‘prior art’ (work done before the application which has substantially the same elements). the subject of the request has to be i]original, and you may have to contend with somebody claiming prior art.
But the key, and maybe surprising thing to those unfamiliar with it) is that if a software designer comes up with a brilliant and knockout original idea, he can’t in the UK take out a patent to protect that; but the person who cuts the code owns the Intellectual Property on that instance of the manifestation of that idea.
However, that doesn’t mean the IP is patentable - it’s very very (very) hard to do with software and it rarely achieved here (UK). For that reason I would be surprised if PIB were to seek a patent in the UK.
Anyway, you can check online at Intellectual Property Office - GOV.UK
“December 1, 2023. I will be seeking legal advice”
I have no connection with PIB or the Scaler folk but from (tedious) personal experience I’d think extremely carefully before down a legal rabbit hole. It’s hard to imagine an IP / Patent case costing less that 6 figures, and in a complex one, probably 7. IN such a case, even if you won, unless you got costs it’s probably bankruptcy.
Charles Dickens “Bleak House” comes to mind, in his scathing essay on the legal system in non-criminal cases, the Court of Chancery
‘This is the Court of Chancery… which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right; which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart; that there is not an honorable man among its practitioners who would not give – who does not often give – the warning, “Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here”.’ (Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1853, Penguin Classics 1971:
