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Town Gets Patent On Being the Center of Europe

Posted by samzenpus on from the continental-drift-be-damned dept.

An anonymous reader writes "And you thought software patents were going to far? How about geography patents? Apparently, as a part of the weird fight over what place in Europe represents the 'geophysical center of Europe,' the Austrian town of Frauenkirchen has received a patent (Austrian patent AM 7738/2003) declaring it the center of Europe. Not clear how one 'infringes' on such a patent, but then again, it's not clear why anyone's patenting this either."

1 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Doubtful by mysidia · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    This should be considered more like a 'trademark' perhaps... "The center of Europe"

    You don't even have to be physically in the exact center to make such a claim.

    You can say things like "Slashdot is at the center of the blogoverse"

    "Silicon valley is the center of the dot com boom"

    There are other explicit and implicit meanings possible with the word 'center'

    You can refer to something as 'in the middle' even when it's not exactly in the center.

    However, due to the local nature of patent laws.... it's doubtful such a patent could be enforced outside the country where it was registered.

    The real center of Europe is probably in the UK, Germany, France, or Russia. Austria must be some small country. never heard of that one..