Jim Lamont, the new champion of the software protection lobby, is set to sidestep the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Patent Office in his fight against the pirates.

Mr. Lamont's attempts to patent what he calls a 100 per cent foolproof software protection scheme (Issue 49) could be banned until July 1985 while the Patent Office and the MoD decide whether his invention is a risk to the UK's security. But Mr. Lamont has an earlier alternative that is now undergoing field trials.

"At least we still have something to offer the software industry," he said last week. He might have added that his company, JLC Data, could earn some money from it; certainly the prospects of JLC seeing much compensation from the Patent Office for its blocked application are bleak.

The original application now goes from the Patent Office to the MoD where the process will be inspected for features "prejudicial to the defence of the realm". Mr. Lamont can do nothing further with that process until it is cleared by the MoD, under threat of fines not greater than £1,000 or two years' imprisonment.

Neither he nor the Patent Office nor the MoD could say exactly how a software protection device could be a threat to national security. It is possible that he inadvertently used a sensitive encryption technique, or that his method has implications for data communications - a patent, once granted, leaves the details of the method open for inspection.

An MoD spokesman said that it was very unusual for an independent inventor to fall foul of the section of the 1977 Patent Act that has trapped Mr. Lamont. He offered figures that suggest that only 0.28 per cent of applications might be subject to MoD restrictions. If Mr. Lamont's is cleared by the MoD's experts, he said, "it could go back by return of post" and continue through the Patent Office procedure.

So far, he said, the MoD had not seen the application and could not comment on it. The Patent Office would not comment on an individual case. Neither had anything to say about the interests of UK software producers and users.

Ironically, it is clause 22 of the Patents Act that has sifted out his application, but it won't be a Catch-22 as far as he is concerned. "We did come up with an alternative," he said last week, "and we're not going to put a patent on it." This means that it can be subject to no restrictions, but of course it can also be copied by anybody with the means to tackle it. The technique is undergoing field trials with a software house in Yorkshire, and it already has the interest of the Guild of Software Houses (Gosh).