Chemical Engineering Software and legal protection thereof

in recent years, increasing number of chemical engineering software CES has introduced to the market which plays an important role in improving efficiency in the petroleum industry . Generally , software is the product of intellectual creativity ,but protection of the intellectual property resideing in software is the subject of some controversy. the paper explores the legal protection of software products and its evolution over time . the approach of selected countries to software protection is reviewed in comparison with the iranian legal regime in the same field. important concepts that need to be considered in acquiring effective protection of CES are presented . software-related patent classifications reviewed and US inventions relating to them were collected using a professional patent data base. finally the CES inventions in each calssification were investigated in comparison to the total number of software patents. consequently the most referable calssification for CES invention has been determined in this paper.

Keywords:

software , chemical engineering , petroleum industry , intellectual property , legal protection.