German Parliament Tells Government To Strictly Limit Patents On Software

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @05:11AM from the can't-patent-this dept.

jrepin writes "On Friday the 7th of June the German Parliament decided upon a joint motion to limit software patents. The Parliament urges the German Government to take steps to limit the granting of patents on computer programs (PDF, German; English translation). Software should exclusively be covered by copyright, and the rights of the copyright holders should not be devalued by third parties' software patents. The only exception where patents should be allowed are computer programs which replace a mechanical or electromagnetic component. In addition the Parliament made clear that governmental actions related to patents must never interfere with the legality of distributing Free Software."

1 of 75 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Better Idea by Murdoch5 · 2013-06-12 05:32 · Score: -1, Troll

How about all software must be released under an open source license / free software license, except where the security of the code is paramount to a system functioning or working correctly and in that case all security modules must be designed to hide a minimal amount of code.