As digital technologies outpace legal frameworks, India’s 2025 Draft Guidelines for Computer-Related Inventions mark a crucial effort to bridge the gap between innovation and intellectual property protection. Released on March 25, 2025, by the Indian Patent Office, the guidelines are a welcome step toward resolving longstanding ambiguity around the patentability of software-driven inventions—a grey area shaped largely by Section 3(k) of the Patents Act, 1970.Subtle Shift That provision, which excludes “computer programmes per se” from being patented, has long been a stumbling block for investors and examiners alike. The new guidelines don’t rewrite the law, but they reinterpret it—drawing from judicial precedent, most notably Ferid Allani v. Union of India (Delhi High Court, 2019). That case introduced the critical concept of “technical effect” and “technical contribution” as a way to distinguish between merely algorithmic tools and genuine technical solutions.
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