Cybercrime and Patents in Europe

Hairy1 writes: "The Council of Europe has been working on a Cyber Crime Treaty for some time. The final version is now available, and makes interesting reading." The submitter points out that treaty signers will be obligated to create legislation, as the UK already has, to force people to disclose passwords and encryption keys to the authorities. The U.S. may well sign this treaty - we've participated in the drafting process. On a slightly different note, people are up in arms because the European Patent Office has decided, apparently on its own, that software programs are patentable. Update: 11/09 15:23 GMT by M : A reader sent in this interesting bibliography of the treaty's history.

Comments

Re:Is it just me...

[tubs]

You will probably find that TVs are banned in Afganastan, so I assume "DVDs" would also be banned.

Probably, the penalty is beheading. But at least it would be for (supposed) religous reasons and not the protection of some companies profits.

Patently Absurd!

[hughk]

The principle of a patent is to grant the patentee a limited monopoly in return for disclosure of the invention.

If we are to have software patents then the new guidelines are out of order, because there is no requirement to do anything other than describe the functionality being patented.

It should be noted that the EPO is in Munich where Microsoft have a major office.

In any case these are only the guidelines for new patent examiners. The law isn't passed yet.