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Euro Software Patents: Stay Of Execution

Posted by michael on from the try-try-again dept.

Mr. Adequate writes: "The European Patent Office finished its diplomatic conference in Munich today. According to the press release, the non-patentability of software will remain unchanged for another year. Then the fun starts again. In the meantime, European Slashdotters could do worse than to voice their concerns to their EU representatives, sign the petition, and of course support the fledgling FSF Europe." The process certainly didn't rule out software patents, just said they're still thinking about it.

1 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. Re:To issue patents or not.... by pointwood · · Score: 5
    There are several reasons why softwarepatents don't work, let me try to explain why:

    You can't do a search for prior art - you'll have to search the entire internet (and more). When searching for prior art, the Patent Office only uses their own database! At least that is what is the practice in Denmark.

    Patent's are supposed to give other developers access to your inventions, but have you tried to read a patentdescription? Patents are written in a languange which "only" patent lawyers understand, therefore the average developer will not be able to benefit from the patent databases - they simply don't understand it.

    Patents mostly don't benefit the small companies because the big companies often will have a many more patents, which you maybe are using without knowing it. Furthermore big companies has much more money and (probably) better lawyers I would also like to argue about whether a patent on "window display system" would have been good for innovation. What if the World Wide Web, the graphic click-able, interface of the Internet as we know it had been patented? im Berners-Lee who invented it, has said: "If the technology had been proprietary it would never have taken off. The decision to make the web an open system was necessary in order for it to become universal".

    For further information, take a look at these links:
    The EuroLinux File on Software Patents

    Even though software patents mostly isn't possible in Europe, many softwarepatents exists anyway - take a look here and I bet you will be shaking your head: European Software Patent Horror Gallery

    SSLUG (Skåne Sjælland Linux User Group) has written a good article here: Software patents - No thanks!

    Freepatents.org

    Greetings Joergen