the software is claimed in conjunction with a novel hardware. On 30 June 2017, revised guidelines on the examination of computer related inventions were published. This 2017 guidelines provides clarity on patentability of software invention in India, i.e., the claimed computer-related invention needs to be ascertained whether it is of a technical nature involving technical advancement as compared to the existing knowledge or having economic significance or both, and is not subject to exclusion under Section 3 of the Patents Act. In 2019, the Court observed, Patent applications in these fields would have to be examined to see if they result in a “technical contribution”, it added. Further elaborating on the usage of the term ‘per se’ in Section 3(k), the Court said, With respect to the term per se, the joint parliamentary committee had expressed the following view: Japan Software-related inventions are patentable. To qualify as an invention, however, there must be "a creation of technical ideas utilizing a law of nature" although this requirement is typically met by "concretely realising the information processing performed by the software by using hardware resources". Software-related inventions may be considered obvious if they involve the application of an operation known in other fields, the addition of a commonly known means or replacement by equivalent, the implementation in software of functions which were previously performed by hardware, or the systematisation of known human transactions. In 1999, the allowance rate for business method patents at the Japan Patent Office (JPO) reached an all-time high of roughly 35 percent. Subsequently, the JPO experienced a surge in business method patent filings. This surge was met with a dramatic decrease in the average grant rate of business method patents during the following six years; it lingered around 8 percent between 2003 and 2006 (8 percent is extremely low in comparison to the average of 50 percent across all technical fields). Since 2006, the average grant rate for business method patents has risen to the current rate of roughly 25 percent. New Zealand In New Zealand computer programs are excluded from patentability under the Patents Act 2013, but guidelines permitting embedded software were added since the initial Patents Bill. From 2013 computer programs 'as such' are excluded from patentability. The as such wording rules out only those software based patents where novelty lies solely in the software. Similar to Europe. Philippines In the Philippines, "schemes, rules and methods