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Only if you were aware of the details of the superinjunction, I would assume.

You would assume wrong. Which is one of the many problems with these ridiculous "Oh shit, I put my cock in the wrong hole!" injunctions.

[citation needed]

I haven't seen the text of this particular injunction (it hasn't been published to the general public, AFAIK), but previous ones that have been published generally contain text like: "This Order binds all persons (whether acting by themselves or in any other way) and all companies (whether acting by their directors, employees or agents or in any other way) who know that this Order has been made." (example, but be warned by clicking it you become a member of the class of people who know that it has been made)

It would look something like this
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWPCC/2010/17.html

Except, of course, that truth is an absolute defence to libel actions in England. The main difference with the US is that in the US the claimant has to show that the statement is untrue, whereas in the UK the respondent (the writer of the statement) has to show that it was true (or that he had adequate grounds for believing it was true even though it wasn't - see Jameel). It even says so on the wikipedia page you linked.

Where the fuck did this idea come from, and why is it repeated so often on Slashdot? Oh right, journalists. Whether left-wing or right-wing, none of them are ever going to want to be held accountable when their shitty journalism damages peoples' lives.

Simon Singh is an idiot if he thinks he can make libellous comments about the BCA *without having the proof to back up what he says*. There is the concrete defence against libel cases in the UK - be able to prove what you say. Simple.

1) The judges ruled that Sing's comments fell under 'fair comment', an expression of his opinion that was allowed under freedom of expression, whether or not what he said was actually true. See http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/350.html

2) The BCA was asked to show the evidence it had that Sing was wrong - ie. that chiropractors could treat common childhood illnesses. The evidence was examined in the British Medical Journal and found to be a load of crap - half the studies they cited had nothing to do with chiropractic, they misrepresented the conclusions of others and the remaining had basic methodological errors making them invalid: http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b2766.full?view=long&pmid=19589818

So far from being an idiot Sing was proven completely right - not only he can make 'libellous' comments against chiropractic because of free speech laws but those comments were actually proven to be correct.

They won't ban BitTorrent for the same reason. The BBC article linked is particularly unhelpful as it takes that quote out of context. The full quote is "The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence, provided one of the conditions in section 296ZD(1)(b) (considered below) is satisfied."

This is a very specific case to a very specific piece of law (Section 296ZD of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988) that covers dealings with some sort of product whose main purpose is to circumvent DRM. This is not directly copyright related. This is only about circumventing DRM.

BitTorrent does not circumvent DRM and so would not fall under this law. It might fall under the Digital Economy Act (Section 17) though, if that ever gets implemented.

I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to know what actually happened read through the judgment, already available online here: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2010/1932.html

Thanks for this; the judgement makes more sense in the light of this info. FWIW, I don't think that the DEA will end up being implemented, there's a lot of both public, commercial and parliamentary opposition to it (even if the MPs don't understand it, they don't like the way it was railroaded through the wash-up). The forthcoming judicial review will be interesting.

They won't ban BitTorrent for the same reason. The BBC article linked is particularly unhelpful as it takes that quote out of context. The full quote is "The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence, provided one of the conditions in section 296ZD(1)(b) (considered below) is satisfied."

This is a very specific case to a very specific piece of law (Section 296ZD of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988) that covers dealings with some sort of product whose main purpose is to circumvent DRM. This is not directly copyright related. This is only about circumventing DRM.

BitTorrent does not circumvent DRM and so would not fall under this law. It might fall under the Digital Economy Act (Section 17) though, if that ever gets implemented.

I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to know what actually happened read through the judgment, already available online here: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2010/1932.html

One such suggested lawful use is for home-made games. However, such use will still circumvent the ETM, or otherwise the game will not play. The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence, provided one of the conditions in section 296ZD(1)(b) (considered below) is satisfied.

The judge goes into a nuanced consideration of the law as it stands, the snippet that’s being quoted is a taken out of context and ignores that huge modifier at the end there. The section in question states:

"(1) This section applies where –
(a) a technical device has been applied to a computer program; and
(b) a person (A) knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies -
(i) manufactures for sale or hire, imports, distributes, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, advertises for sale or hire or has in his possession for commercial purposes any means the sole intended purpose of which is to facilitate the unauthorised removal or circumvention of the technical device; or
(ii) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to remove or circumvent the technical device.

(2) The following persons have the same rights against A as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright –
(a) a person –
(i) issuing to the public copies of, or
(ii) communicating to the public,
the computer program to which the technical device has been applied;
(b) the copyright owner or his exclusive licensee, if he is not the person specified in paragraph (a);
(c) the owner or exclusive licensee of any intellectual property right in the technical device applied to the computer program

(6) In this section references to a technical device in relation to a computer program are to any device intended to prevent or restrict acts that are not authorised by the copyright owner of that computer program and are restricted by copyright.

(8) Expressions used in this section which are defined for the purposes of Part 1 of this Act (copyright) have the same meaning as in that Part."

The judge then goes on to establish the multi-stepped test required for a finding

a claimant under s.296 needs to show the following things:

(a) that there is a "technical device" which has been applied to a computer program;

(b) that the defendant:
(i) has manufactured, imported, distributed, sold etc, means the sole intended purpose of which is to facilitate the unauthorised removal or circumvention of the technical device;
(ii) knows or has reason to believe that that means will be used to make infringing copies of the computer program.

(c) that the claimant has standing to bring their claims because: (i) it is a person issuing to the public copies of, or communicating to the public, the computer program to which the technical device has been applied, or, if not such person, it is the owner of the copyright in the computer program, or his exclusive licensee; and/or
(ii) it owns or holds an exclusive license to any intellectual property right in the technical device applied to the computer program

Hardly the kind of extremist reasoning thats being suggested.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2010/1932.html

"If McKinnon is extradited, he could be given a 70-year sentence in a high-security prison (he would, as an overseas national, be considered a "flight risk", hence imprisonment with violent criminals rather than in an open prison)."

If McKinnon was tried, convicted, and sentenced to serve time in prison, then he would obviously no longer be a "flight risk" (as he would already be imprisoned). Therefore, if McKinnon was placed in a "high-security prison" (what we call "maximum security" in the US), it would not be because he was a "flight risk".

Neither extradition, nor conviction, would guarantee McKinnon prison time in a maximum security prison by default. The ignorant assertion that they somehow would is sensationalist nonsense, and a gross misrepresentation of the American justice system.

If McKinnon was placed in a maximum security prison, he would not be housed with violent criminals. He would be confined to his own individual cell and have no contact with the other inmates. This is IF he was placed in a maximum security prison.

McKinnon falls under the category of what we define as a "white collar criminal" in the US. These are criminals who post little physical risk to the public and are non-violent. They are placed in minimum security prisons.

"If tried in the UK - his home country, and where he was living when he committed the crimes he admits to - the sentence would be more lenient."

Where McKinnon was living when he committed the crime is irrelevant. When McKinnon unlawfully accessed US computers, he committed a crime on US soil, involving US property. If he didn't want to come under US law or jurisdiction, then he shouldn't have compromised US government computer systems.

According to the House of Lords judgment in Mckinnon V Government of The United States of America and Another, McKinnon's crimes have equivalents under British law for which the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. The maximum sentence under US law provided in your quote is 70 years. Both of these numbers are arbitrary however as any reasonable person is aware that under both American and British law, individuals rarely receive the maximum sentence for their crimes, other than in the most egregious of crimes and circumstance.

If we are to consider the maximum sentence facing McKinnon, then should we not also consider the scope of the crimes for which he is accused?

The allegations against McKinnon can be viewed in the April 2007 High Court Judgment. Paragraph 4 outlines data deleted by McKinnon, which includes:

(1) Critical operating system files from nine computers, the deletion of which shut down the entire US Army's Military District of Washington network of over 2000 computers for 24 hours, significantly disrupting Governmental functions [...]

(2) 2,455 user accounts on a US Army computer that controlled access to an Army computer network, causing those computers to reboot and become inoperable [...]

(3) Critical Operating system files and logs from computers at US Naval Weapons Station Earle, one of which was used for monitoring the identity, location, physical condition, staffing and battle readiness of Navy ships. Deletion of these files rendered the Base's entire network of over 300 computers inoperable at a critical time immediately following 11 September 2001 [...]

What a laugh this man must be having at the expense of American and British relations, judicial process, and the spirit of our common law with his long line of vexatious appeals.

If you read the judgement:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2009/3148.html

the court accepts that it doesn't have jurisdiction but that the WMF has agreed to cooperate to an extent.

The court ruling is available:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2009/3148.html

From wikimedia's POV someone is being a serious dick (WP:NOT somewhere to launch random attacks on people). On top of that they are being a dick in a way that has legal consequences. The person who is being attacked requests an IP. Wikimedia asks for a court ruling effectively to make sure their claims have some validity. They do wikimedia hands over the IP.

Nope. The court thinks she has reason to think that it is blackmail:

"In ordinary language, the mother believes that she is the subject of an attempt at blackmail. On the information before the court, she has reason to believe that."

Section 7

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2009/3148.html

# In reply, lawyers for the Respondent made a number of preliminary observations. First they addressed the request made on behalf of the Applicants that the amendment be deleted. They stated that the Respondent is not the publisher or writer of the article relating to the mother, or of the amendment. They said they would refer the request for the deletion of the archived version of the amendment to "the community of volunteer editors, one or more of whom may attempt to address your concerns". They referred to the immunity they claim under section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act (1996) from most civil liability for content they did not originate or develop. They stated that the Respondent does not conduct operations within the jurisdiction of this court. Nevertheless, they stated that they were happy to forward the Applicants' request to their volunteer community.

# The amendment was removed promptly following the request made on behalf of the Applicants.

# In their letter of 19 November lawyers for the Respondent next addressed the Applicants' request for the IP information. They stated that it is the policy of the Respondent that such data be released in response to a valid sub poena or equivalent compulsory legal process. They added:

        "Without waiving our insistence that no court in the United Kingdom has proper jurisdiction over us as a foreign entity, we nevertheless are willing to comply with a properly issued court order narrowly limited to the material you ask for in your letter".

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2009/3148.html

See e.g.: Canlii, Austlii, Bailii, ...

On analysis, the key which provides access to protected data, like the data itself, exists separately from each appellant's "will". Even if it is true that each created his own key, once created, the key to the data, remains independent of the appellant's "will" even when it is retained only in his memory, at any rate until it is changed. If investigating officers were able to identify the key from a different source (say, for example, from the records of the shop where the equipment was purchased) no one would argue that the key was not distinct from the equipment which was to be accessed, and indeed the individual who owned the equipment and knew the key to it. Again, if the arresting officers had arrived at the premises in Sheffield immediately after S had completed the process of accessing his own equipment enabling them to identify the key, the key itself would have been a piece of information existing, at this point, independently of S himself and would have been immediately available to the police for their use in the investigation. In this sense the key to the computer equipment is no different to the key to a locked drawer. The contents of the drawer exist independently of the suspect: so does the key to it. The contents may or may not be incriminating: the key is neutral. In the present cases the prosecution is in possession of the drawer: it cannot however gain access to the contents. The lock cannot be broken or picked, and the drawer itself cannot be damaged without destroying the contents.

What's even more worrying is that the judgement of the Court of Appeal does not EVEN ONCE mention complexity as an issue. Further, it can't be 'appealed' to the European Court of Justice, only a point of law can be queried there. Also, this case already brings the UK closer in line with the EU regarding software patents, and it's not easy to appeal to the House of Lords - they only hear about 90 cases per year and generally only on areas of law that are important to the public. This case is more of an argument about facts than an argument on a point of law.

The original High Court decision is here and the Court of Appeal decision is here.

Basically, Symbian was denied their patent, which revolves around faster accessing of DLLs (more details of which you can find in my first link). The patent was denied because the patent officer in question argued that what they were patenting was nothing more than a different way to call a DLL's functions and not anything that alters the way the computer's resources are managed. The High Court decided that she (the patent officer) had understated the technical merit and effect of the patent.

The Comptroller General of Patents then appealed against the decision to grant the previous appeal, bringing us up to the case in the Court of Appeal. The general argument revolves around whether or not what Symbian have patented is merely a computer program or whether it has some additional effect - if it were just a computer program, it would not be patentable. The Court of Appeal more or less restates the edecision of the High Court, adding that the patent is not 'just' a computer program, because it has the 'knock-on effect of the computer working better'.

Whilst everyone here will have their own view on software patents (largely in consensus here, I imagine), this is a poor summary - although I think that is largely due to the very poor write-up by the Times, which is trying to write in a way that is understandable to regular readers rather than those with a technical background. As stated, patents aren't granted for any old program, but the courts considered this to be more of a software process which improves the way a system runs, rather than a simple program that is executed and terminates. Just how correct they are in this decision is a different matter, but the Court of Appeal decision is not very long at all, for those who are interested.

Anyway, this case wouldn't have received any news coverage even outside the financial crisis, since it's far beyond the understanding of the average person in this country - and doesn't have anything to do with a potential imminent apocalypse.

What's even more worrying is that the judgement of the Court of Appeal does not EVEN ONCE mention complexity as an issue. Further, it can't be 'appealed' to the European Court of Justice, only a point of law can be queried there. Also, this case already brings the UK closer in line with the EU regarding software patents, and it's not easy to appeal to the House of Lords - they only hear about 90 cases per year and generally only on areas of law that are important to the public. This case is more of an argument about facts than an argument on a point of law.

The original High Court decision is here and the Court of Appeal decision is here.

Basically, Symbian was denied their patent, which revolves around faster accessing of DLLs (more details of which you can find in my first link). The patent was denied because the patent officer in question argued that what they were patenting was nothing more than a different way to call a DLL's functions and not anything that alters the way the computer's resources are managed. The High Court decided that she (the patent officer) had understated the technical merit and effect of the patent.

The Comptroller General of Patents then appealed against the decision to grant the previous appeal, bringing us up to the case in the Court of Appeal. The general argument revolves around whether or not what Symbian have patented is merely a computer program or whether it has some additional effect - if it were just a computer program, it would not be patentable. The Court of Appeal more or less restates the edecision of the High Court, adding that the patent is not 'just' a computer program, because it has the 'knock-on effect of the computer working better'.

Whilst everyone here will have their own view on software patents (largely in consensus here, I imagine), this is a poor summary - although I think that is largely due to the very poor write-up by the Times, which is trying to write in a way that is understandable to regular readers rather than those with a technical background. As stated, patents aren't granted for any old program, but the courts considered this to be more of a software process which improves the way a system runs, rather than a simple program that is executed and terminates. Just how correct they are in this decision is a different matter, but the Court of Appeal decision is not very long at all, for those who are interested.

Anyway, this case wouldn't have received any news coverage even outside the financial crisis, since it's far beyond the understanding of the average person in this country - and doesn't have anything to do with a potential imminent apocalypse.

The case isn't about ownership of the contacts. It's about breach of restrictive covenants in his contract of employment. The particular judgment was simply concerned with pre-action disclosure: ie the linkedin contacts are evidence, not the substance of the case.

Judgment in full at http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2008/745.html

Does this establish that the whole idea of it being a crime to provide a service that allows others to circumvent copyright is going to fall apart?

I doubt it. Unfortunately the case doesn't seem to have made it to BAILII, but I suspect the ruling was on the grounds that there are commercially relevant and legal purposes for a modchip (e.g. personal backups, grey imports, custom software) and therefore the relevant legislation does not apply in this case.

Back in my day, our courts decided something similar in a case known as Donoghue v Stevenson. Some of you might even have heard of it. {1932 SC (HL) 31}

Sending my e-mail on is creating a copy.

Selling on a used book does not COPY the book. If you pop off to the photo copier and run off 200 and send each to one of your friends on a mailing list you are in breach of copyright. Just like (presuming of course that my e-mail qualifies as a sufficiently original work that took some effort to create) sending on my e-mail to 200 people.

Even forwarding the original physical letter can be a breach of copyright in the UK see http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2007/111.html/ (paragraph 241), and passing on a COPY of the letter is certainly a breach (given the above originality comment). In fact (I'm guessing) that is probably why open letters are labeled as such, to avoid any doubt that sharing what otherwise might be confidential information is OK.

Indeed to transfer the copyright requires a signed written document stating that is the purpose. Without that I still own the copyright of the material in the letter. And given international conventions on copyright law you can expect at least to some extent it to be true in any signatory country.

The full judgment is at http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/762 .html

"It seems like that if you are against software patents you must be against patents in order for it to make sense..."

It may seem like that but only if you have little if any knowledge of the patent system - its history, economics and law - and an extremely distorted view of what the opposition to software patents is all about.

http://eupat.ffii.org/vreji/cusku/index.en.html#iu ris http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2005/1 589.html http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id =959931 http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_3/kahin/i ndex.html#k7 http://www.researchineurope.org/policy/patentdirlt r.htm

It is also important to realise that the Patent Offices are not and never can be the arbiters of what constitute the great inventions of the day. The patent system is not some prize-giving system, only granting patents to the truly worthy inventors, and in order to be fair and objective, the P.Os can only - at best - reject the truly meritless or clearly unpatentable applications. It may be possible to raise the "inventive step" a little and improve patent quality a little but only in hindsight and in the subjective opinion of some is the 1-click patent a "stupid" patent. In fact a case can easily be made that it was more desirable from the point of view of the economic rationale of the patent system to grant the 1-click patent than it was to grant the RSA patent. The salient point though is that it was neither necessary nor efficient to grant either patent in order that society, the economy and the progress of the sciences and useful arts would benefit from those inventions.

Please have a look at a presentation I gave in the EP to interested assistants and MEPs about this. Although it may not be that clear without the accompanying commentary, I hope it still can clarify some of the important points.

Basically, the problem is that it does not only apply to commercial scale copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting, but also criminalises

• Alleged trademark confusion, e.g. Burger King v. Wholebake, or L'oreal SA & Ors v Bellure NV & Ors

• Infringements on database rights. As you may know, database rights only apply in case a "substantial investment" occurred, but how is a competitor supposed to know this in advance? Further, case law on this new "right" is still very much in development (slides 14-15 of the presentation, e.g. a case about a company selling an electronic version of a phone directory )

• Non-piracy related copyright infringements: e.g. Deutsche Bahn (the German national railway corporation) has been convicted for copyright infringement, because it altered the plans of the architect which designed their new Berlin railway station in a way which the architect considered to be infringing on his copyright. Another very nice on: a museum which is being sued for repairing an artwork which consisted of a urinal, because that person who destroyed it considered the "destroyed urinal" as a work of art in itself.

• Then there are also registered and unregistered design rights, which like database rights are not examined at all for validity. If you start threatening criminal prosecution for infringing on "right" which may not be valid in the first place, you get really chilling effects in the market place.

If you have time to read only one background paper on this completely idiotic and misguided directive, have a look at the position paper of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. But those of the Law Society of England and Wales and Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law are also very good. You can find a lot more position papers on FFII's IPRED2 workgroup page under "External opinions"

Unlike the software patents directive, this is not a case of big companies vs small ones. Pretty much everyone except for the IFPI (music publishing industry) are trashing this directive like there's no tomorrow. And if you want to know why it is nevertheless being pushed through by the Commission, read my ENDitorial in the previous EDRI-gram.

Lik-Sang could have lived on if they so chose, selling peripherals, cables, games and suchlike. I half expect that they probably will, and this winding up is all part of some convoluted ploy to get out of paying Sony any money. Expect to see a mysterious selled called Sik-Lang appear sometime soon on Ebay.

> The fact that 'Bogtha' appears at the bottom, as part of the comment and not part of the
> meta-data, means that I've "signed" the "contract".

No - I think what the judge said was the fact that it doesn't means that you haven't. The inverse isn't necessarily true or untrue. He then goes on to discuss what might constitute a legal signature.

(this is from reading the judgement here:
http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/c ases/EWHC/Ch/2006/813.html&query=+incidental+in+th e+sense+identified+by+Lord+Westbury&method=all , especially para 22 on)

In the 21st century, the legal definition of "sign" does indeed include some, not all, instances of "a few lines of text" in an email. I quote from paras 28 & 30 of the judgement.

"I have no doubt that if a party creates and sends an electronically created document then he will be treated as having signed it to the same extent that he would in law be treated as having signed a hard copy of the same document. The fact that the document is created electronically as opposed to as a hard copy can make no difference."

"If a party or a party's agent sending an e mail types his or her or his or her principal's name to the extent required or permitted by existing case law in the body of an e mail, then in my view that would be a sufficient signature for the purposes of Section 4"

Blogs making assertions without citing any legal authority are not particularly persuasive. The constitutional position is clear - see paragraphs 20 to 23 of ex parte Jackson (http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2005/94 .html).

Your Blair/Hitler statement is too laughable to deserve a response.

One would draw the line where you yourself have very nicely drawn it and disallow claim #3. That is the essence of the exclusions in EPC Article 52 and the answer to the why of it is to be found in the economic and social welfare principles upon which the patent system is founded. Principles that have apparently been forgotten in the U.S. but fortunately not in the U.K: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2005/1 589.html

It is quite irrelevant that it is possible to make the facile argument that every method could be implemented in software and that sometimes it is difficult to draw distinctions conceptually. Patent system policy and law is not made to conform to academic arguments about the mathematical nature of the physical world but to conform to the economic and social requirements implied in the phrase, "promote progress in the sciences and useful arts".

You are shifting the burden of proof and rather distorting the facts: You may only ever have seen exceptionally weak arguments, but that is not because only exceptionally weak arguments have ever been deployed - quite the converse is true*. The problem so far has instead been that no argument with even a semblance of strength for introducing software patents has ever been produced. And however weak you think any argument against the expansion of patentable subject matter is, it automatically wins unless you have a strong argument in favour of that expansion. But the expansion has occurred anyway of course, and in the face of strong arguments and strong opposition from industry and academia. That many companies, academics and individuals had to make such arguments at all illustrates the appalling state of recent policy making in this area (if you can call it policy making). Any credible economist will tell you that patent scope expansion without prior empirical and sound theoretical justification is verboten. Too bad - the damage is done and in the US it seems the fight's effectively over now, but the rest of what I want to say is appropriately Eurocentric anyway.

*
http://researchoninnovation.org/online.htm
http://www.si.umich.edu/~kahin/mip.html
http://swpat.ffii.org/archive/mirror/impact/index. en.html
http://philsalin.com/patents.html
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jul05/1557
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=stor y_16-8-2005_pg5_12
http://swpat.ffii.org/archive/quotes/index.en.html

"You have to be prepared to deal with issues like why expressing a particular piece of logic in C or Ada doesn't deserve patent protection, while expressing the same logic in Verilog or VHDL, which look identical to a non-programmer should deserve that protection."

That is definitely not an issue. One does not ask whether or not some invention deserves a patent, but whether or not it is patentable subject matter at all and your example is a poor one because if the claims of a patent are directed to the expressions of logic, then they are software patent claims.

"Likewise, why a device that fits the description in a patent claim should not be protected if the implementation happens to be (even in part) carried out with an embedded processor with embedded code, even though it's not at all apparent to the outside world that there's any software involved at all."

The distinction between hardware and software is not useful and is not at all relevant to the question of whether a patent claim is a software patent claim or not. One way to discover how the distinction between software patent and non-software patent is determined (and it is not always easy) is to read the way it is expressed by Judge Peter Prescott QC in his recent CFPH decision, in which he carefully and fully interprets the EPC Article 52 exclusions. Unfortunately, Prescott's interpretation seems to me to leave a lot of room for claiming things such as image enhancement techniques derived from purely mathematical considerations, but at least compression algorithms and data manipulation and data st

http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IEHC/2005/233.html

So yes, in England and Wales at least, running a program without permission is an act of copyright infringement. I think this is very sad.