patentability of computer-implemented inventions, and (2) the US court decision to expand patent protection to business methods. The opinions are divided into two sides. Dr. Tangkitvanich, the IT specialist of Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI), raised his concern that Thailand is not in a good stage for a software patent as there were several flaws in patent rights. For example, the business method prevention has high tendency to hinder the growth in innovations especially for the infant software companies. Moreover, the software patent may cause monopoly and innovation problems. “Monopoly will thwart innovations of new software products, particularly open-source software”, said by a group of Thai Economists. However, Dr. Hirapruk who is the Director of Software Park Thailand, on the other hand, provides his support on allowing the computer programs to be patentable: “Thailand had to provide a patent-right protection for computer software to ensure foreign high-tech investors that software producers' creativity would be secured from violations in Thailand”. As a result, Mr. Sribhibhadh, president of the Association of Thai Software Industry, emphasized that there will need to be a clear overview of the impact on the local industry if Thailand really had to fully implement the patent right protections. United States The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted patents that may be referred to as software patents since at least the early 1970s. In Gottschalk v. Benson (1972), the United States Supreme Court ruled that a patent for a process should not be allowed if it would "wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect would be a patent on the algorithm itself", adding that "it is said that the decision precludes a patent for any program servicing a computer. We do not so hold." In 1981, the Supreme Court stated that "a claim drawn to subject matter otherwise statutory does not become nonstatutory simply because it uses a mathematical formula, computer program, or digital computer" and a claim is patentable if it contains "a mathematical formula [and] implements or applies the formula in a structure or process which, when considered as a whole, is performing a function which the patent laws were designed to protect". Due to different treatment of federal patent rights in different parts of the country, in 1982 the U.S. Congress created a new court (the Federal Circuit) to hear patent cases. Following several landmark decisions by this court, by the early