The patent law of most European countries, both EU and non-EU, is underpinned by the European Patent Convention (EPC). The EPC also created the European Patent Office (EPO) which enables separate patents for multiple European countries to be obtained through a single application process. Thus, the current UK, German, French, Dutch, Hungarian etc. law on what is patentable is intended to have the same effect as the corresponding provisions of the EPC, which are applied directly by the EPO.
However, there has been a tendency for each country's courts to interpret these provisions differently from those of the other countries and the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO). The Commission came to the view that this lack of harmony was incompatible with the single market. This is stated explicitly in articles 2 and 3 of the draft directive:
(2) Differences exist in the protection of computer-implemented inventions offered by the administrative practices and the case law of the different Member States. Such differences could create barriers to trade and hence impede the proper functioning of the internal market.
(3) Such differences have developed and could become greater as Member States adopt new and different administrative practices, or where national case law interpreting the current legislation evolves differently.
The aim of the Directive was to harmonise the jurisprudence of the EU member states with that of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO. In effect, the Directive would force courts to interpret the issue of technical contribution in line with the content of the Directive instead of by applying tests that the individual national courts had devised.
There was no intention of changing the substantive law and it is doubtful that the EU could do this because the law on patentability is derived from the EPC, to which non-EU states, including Switzerland, Bulgaria, Iceland, Turkey and Romania, are parties, with a leavening from TRIPS.
The promulgation of the Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions was never going to be the correct forum for preventing "software patents". The horse had already bolted when the EPC and TRIPS treaties were negotiated. The scope of the Directive was far too limited and the power of the EU to change substantive patent law too circumscribed by these other treaties.
Perhaps you should suggest to your neighbour that he and all other police officers be fitted with webcam/microphone/3G phone combos so that the public can monitor them via the Web as they perform their duties. Of course, as a paragon of virtue with nothing to hide, he could have no objection.
Also, who cares what the identity of a defendant is. The important point is that the person who committed the crime is the one that is prosecuted. The "real name" of that person is irrelevant.
Changing the subject a bit, the ID card issue will be the poll tax all over again. Wait till the notices to attend a registration centre 40 miles away, on a work day, and the hand over £80+ start hitting door mats. Suddenly, an awful lot of people with suddenly be far less keen on ID cards.
Copyright can provide protection for patterns on products, e.g. the rounded white square with the central silver Apple logo on the top face of a Mac Mini.
Unregistered Design Right
This operates similar to copyright but with a much, much shorter term - up to 15 years depending on circumstances. Apple generally will not be able to protect products using unregistered design right because it is a US corporation - they may be saved if the designer is a "qualifying person", e.g. an EU citizen. US corporations do not benefit from unregistered design right because the US does not provided an equivalent right.
There is an EU-wide version that have a term of only 3 years from first publication.
Registered Designs
These are available in UK and EU flavours and are granted by the UK Designs Registry and OHIM respectively on application. Both have a term of up to 25 years and are equivalent to US Design Patents.
Registered designs can protect patterns and shapes but the registration may be revoked if the design fails to meet certain novelty and individuality requirements.
The unregistered rights, namely copyright and unregistered design right, differ from registered designs in that copying must be proved in order to enforce them. For registered designs, infringement is simply a matter of whether the alleged infringing design looks sufficiently like the pictures in the registered design.
Ham radio is not just about talking. Ham radio licences, at least my UK one (G4JZA), allows you to design, build and use transmitters without having to have them type approved.
A PC per se does not help any more than the power station that supplies the power to run the PC or the antenna that receives the signal. There is nothing in the structure of the PC that is specific to the problem of decrypting broadcasts. Consequently, a PC is not "helpful" in the sense of being specifically adapted to the problem. However, a hooky smart card or a decryption program is specifically adapted to the problem and is therefore "helpful".
Furthermore, since something needs to be added to a PC to get it to decrypt, the requirement of providing adequate legal protection (Art. 16(1)) can be met by preventing the supply of the something that needs to be added and implicitly puts bounds of the interpretation of Art. 16(2) which is primarily explanatory. Thus, Art. 16(2) defines the types of activity that where prevention should be employed insofar as is necessary for the prime objective of Art. 16(1) to be achieved.
Finally, the text is just a draft and may well yet be amended to exclude explicitly devices have significant other uses or which are not primarily concerned with decryption. For example, the equivalent part (Art. 6) of the EU Copyright Directive includes the following subsection:
2. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which:
(a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or
(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or
(c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of,
any effective technological measures.
Calm down everyone. A PC in itself is not capable of decryption, you need to add the appropriate program. A PC is merely a component that can be used, in combination with other components, to make a decryption device. Similarly, a gearbox will not transport you to the supermarket and bring back the shopping, you need to add the rest of the components that make up a car.
There is a distinction between capable as it stands of doing and capable of being used for.
Until a few years ago, US patents were not published until granted and the term was 17 years from grant. Consequently, an application could be kept pending for 20 years or more by filing continuation and continuation in part applications, all of which would have been secret. The aim was for the patent to emerge into a well developed industry to maximise potential income. Patents obtained with this tactic are what are referred to as submarine patents.
Now almost all US patent applications are published 18 months from the filing/priority date and the term is 20 years from the filing date. Thus, the existence of the application is public and delaying grant does not push the expiry date into the future, thereby removing the rationale for submarine patents.
We had a related problem, although in a smaller way.
Our core business software requires Windows on client machines and MS SQL Server. Since, the database is SQL, we can query it to extract information directly while sending all inputs through Windows front end client. In order to make the information in the database available to our Linux intranet webserver we built a SOAP layer between the MS SQL Server and webserver.
The SOAP layer consists of a SOAP server, written in Delphi. The SOAP server comprises a core and.dlls that handle requests for different services. A dll can be written to execute specific queries and return the results or provide a generic SQL functionality which is OK for small result sets.
At the webserver end, we use cgi programs, written in Kylix or Python, which call method made avaialble by the SOAP server and its modules. For Kylix, we have a SOAPSQLQuery component that can be used rather like and other Delphi/Kylix dataset components.
This means that we can use information from the database to provide access to information via web browsers on desktops running Windows or Linux.
The SOAP server is now used for all database access, irrespective of the OS of the querying machine, to provide flexibility for the future. For example, Word and a Word add-in that gets name and address info for letters can easily be replaced by OpenOffice on Linux and a Java component because the actual database access is performed by the SOAP server and the SOAP interface is constant and simple to use.
Haikus only really work with syllable timed languages. Having said this, US Perl is probably less strongly stressed than other Perls. Perhaps, there could be a Perl limerick contest for those whose Perl is more strongly stressed?
Some Irish-Americans, perhaps, acting as private citizens. That's like blaming Germany because Muslims living in Germany contributed heavily to Al-Queda. That doesn't fly.
Yeah and I suppose funding of Al Qaeda by private US citizens is not illegal? It's more like blaming a country for taking no action against its citizens who collude in the murder of innocent men, women and children.
Personally, I'd recommend allowing NI a referendum on joining Ireland, as that would solve the whole problem.
Hell, why didn't successive UK governments think of that? Because the vote would go in favour of NI remaining in the UK, check out the demographics, and the aggrieved would remain aggrieved and the Unionists would be even more instransigent. For goodness sake, the maniac Paisley just got the biggest share of the vote in the elections for the NI assembly and he is virulently against the Good Friday agreement.
The election results are here. Note that the republicans of all flavours got 42 seats against 59 for Unionists with 6 for the Alliance (we love everybody) Party and one independent!.
There are companies that specialise in performing prior art searches and people like what they know.
The need for novelty knockouts, with no reward for close prior art relevant to obviousness, meant that likelihood of reward for a submission was too low to justify spending significant amounts of time hunting for prior art. Requiring novelty knockouts was understandable because novelty is a relatively clear cut issue and less prone to generating arguments than obviousness.
The pool of engineers who visited the site and who might have been expected to have professional knowledge of prior art, without doing any searching, was too small. The need for novelty knockouts may have limited repeat visiting by this class of potential prior art providers.
There is not enough patent litigation to provide a sufficient number of bounties to make people feel like they have a chance and continue to visit in the hope of being able to make a submission.
If it was exactly the same, the re-examination provisions would not exist. The key word is "may". The Commissioner may also simply ignore it. If you are serious about getting a patent revoked, you need to pay the fees.
"Innovation" is just another way of saying new idea. Electronic and mechanical inventions all start with an idea about how to do something. The patent protects against others using the same idea in their products and processes.
Yes you would, assuming no one had used those same settings before and the setting were not obvious from what had been done or described before.
You might have a claim like this:
A method of producing a widget, the method comprising:
setting up an Lathe Co. XXX lathe as follows
[list of settings]
processing at workpiece with the lathe until a widget is produced.
The current law is EPC and national laws that are based on the EPC. The European Patent Office is not related to the EU.
All EU states are EPC contracting states but not all EPC states are EU states, e.g. Switzerland and Turkey.
The EU cannot change the statutory definition of what is patentable because this would conflict with the member states obligations under the EPC or creating a situation where nation patents are granted on a different basis to European patents, which would not make things clearer. However, it can change the law in EU states that relate to enforcement and can exclude some acts from the definition of infringement, e.g. acts for ensuring interoperability as proposed and private non-commercial use in UK law.
Theoretically, the EPC member states are meant to harmonise their interpretation of Art. 52(2) EPC. However, in the absence of EPO Board of Appeal decisions being binding precedent, there is a tendency for different countries to interpret Art. 52(2) EPC differently. The UK is a real culprit in this respect and has some decisions that are out of step with the EPO Boards of Appeal but binding on the UK patent office and lower UK courts.
The EU legislation is aimed at harmonising the interpretation of Art. 52(2) EPC and equivalent national law provisions in respect of computer-implementing inventions in the patent offices and courts of the EU states.
The basis of the standardisation is the interpretation established by the Boards of Appeal of the EPO.
The distinction is subtle. The aim is not to get everyone singing from the same song sheet, they do that already, but to get everyone singing in tune. Tbis is all explained here
Slashdot Mirror
The patent law of most European countries, both EU and non-EU, is underpinned by the European Patent Convention (EPC). The EPC also created the European Patent Office (EPO) which enables separate patents for multiple European countries to be obtained through a single application process. Thus, the current UK, German, French, Dutch, Hungarian etc. law on what is patentable is intended to have the same effect as the corresponding provisions of the EPC, which are applied directly by the EPO.
However, there has been a tendency for each country's courts to interpret these provisions differently from those of the other countries and the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO). The Commission came to the view that this lack of harmony was incompatible with the single market. This is stated explicitly in articles 2 and 3 of the draft directive:
(2) Differences exist in the protection of computer-implemented inventions offered by the administrative practices and the case law of the different Member States. Such differences could create barriers to trade and hence impede the proper functioning of the internal market.
(3) Such differences have developed and could become greater as Member States adopt new and different administrative practices, or where national case law interpreting the current legislation evolves differently.
The aim of the Directive was to harmonise the jurisprudence of the EU member states with that of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO. In effect, the Directive would force courts to interpret the issue of technical contribution in line with the content of the Directive instead of by applying tests that the individual national courts had devised.
There was no intention of changing the substantive law and it is doubtful that the EU could do this because the law on patentability is derived from the EPC, to which non-EU states, including Switzerland, Bulgaria, Iceland, Turkey and Romania, are parties, with a leavening from TRIPS.
The promulgation of the Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions was never going to be the correct forum for preventing "software patents". The horse had already bolted when the EPC and TRIPS treaties were negotiated. The scope of the Directive was far too limited and the power of the EU to change substantive patent law too circumscribed by these other treaties.
Perhaps you should suggest to your neighbour that he and all other police officers be fitted with webcam/microphone/3G phone combos so that the public can monitor them via the Web as they perform their duties. Of course, as a paragon of virtue with nothing to hide, he could have no objection.
Also, who cares what the identity of a defendant is. The important point is that the person who committed the crime is the one that is prosecuted. The "real name" of that person is irrelevant.
Changing the subject a bit, the ID card issue will be the poll tax all over again. Wait till the notices to attend a registration centre 40 miles away, on a work day, and the hand over £80+ start hitting door mats. Suddenly, an awful lot of people with suddenly be far less keen on ID cards.
Copyright can provide protection for patterns on products, e.g. the rounded white square with the central silver Apple logo on the top face of a Mac Mini.
This operates similar to copyright but with a much, much shorter term - up to 15 years depending on circumstances. Apple generally will not be able to protect products using unregistered design right because it is a US corporation - they may be saved if the designer is a "qualifying person", e.g. an EU citizen. US corporations do not benefit from unregistered design right because the US does not provided an equivalent right.
There is an EU-wide version that have a term of only 3 years from first publication.
These are available in UK and EU flavours and are granted by the UK Designs Registry and OHIM respectively on application. Both have a term of up to 25 years and are equivalent to US Design Patents.
Registered designs can protect patterns and shapes but the registration may be revoked if the design fails to meet certain novelty and individuality requirements.
The unregistered rights, namely copyright and unregistered design right, differ from registered designs in that copying must be proved in order to enforce them. For registered designs, infringement is simply a matter of whether the alleged infringing design looks sufficiently like the pictures in the registered design.
Ham radio is not just about talking. Ham radio licences, at least my UK one (G4JZA), allows you to design, build and use transmitters without having to have them type approved.
A PC per se does not help any more than the power station that supplies the power to run the PC or the antenna that receives the signal. There is nothing in the structure of the PC that is specific to the problem of decrypting broadcasts. Consequently, a PC is not "helpful" in the sense of being specifically adapted to the problem. However, a hooky smart card or a decryption program is specifically adapted to the problem and is therefore "helpful".
Furthermore, since something needs to be added to a PC to get it to decrypt, the requirement of providing adequate legal protection (Art. 16(1)) can be met by preventing the supply of the something that needs to be added and implicitly puts bounds of the interpretation of Art. 16(2) which is primarily explanatory. Thus, Art. 16(2) defines the types of activity that where prevention should be employed insofar as is necessary for the prime objective of Art. 16(1) to be achieved.
Finally, the text is just a draft and may well yet be amended to exclude explicitly devices have significant other uses or which are not primarily concerned with decryption. For example, the equivalent part (Art. 6) of the EU Copyright Directive includes the following subsection:
You should read The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and in particular Arts. 31 and 32, especially the reference to the "object and purpose".
Calm down everyone. A PC in itself is not capable of decryption, you need to add the appropriate program. A PC is merely a component that can be used, in combination with other components, to make a decryption device. Similarly, a gearbox will not transport you to the supermarket and bring back the shopping, you need to add the rest of the components that make up a car.
There is a distinction between capable as it stands of doing and capable of being used for.
My mother taught herself basic on a BBC B and wrote a program to convert knitting patterns for different sizes.
Until a few years ago, US patents were not published until granted and the term was 17 years from grant. Consequently, an application could be kept pending for 20 years or more by filing continuation and continuation in part applications, all of which would have been secret. The aim was for the patent to emerge into a well developed industry to maximise potential income. Patents obtained with this tactic are what are referred to as submarine patents.
Now almost all US patent applications are published 18 months from the filing/priority date and the term is 20 years from the filing date. Thus, the existence of the application is public and delaying grant does not push the expiry date into the future, thereby removing the rationale for submarine patents.
I'm gonna get a patent on yawning everytime a comment like the above is posted.
It's not a submarine patent, it was granted and published back in 1987.
Of course, when the English wanted a republic for a bit, they didn't faff around with referenda; they just cut the b***ard's head off.
Yeah, it has the same sovereign as the UK, Canada, New Zealand ...
Yup!
With _registered trademarks_, if it weren't registrable, there is not valid right to be infringed.
We had a related problem, although in a smaller way.
Our core business software requires Windows on client machines and MS SQL Server. Since, the database is SQL, we can query it to extract information directly while sending all inputs through Windows front end client. In order to make the information in the database available to our Linux intranet webserver we built a SOAP layer between the MS SQL Server and webserver.
The SOAP layer consists of a SOAP server, written in Delphi. The SOAP server comprises a core and .dlls that handle requests for different services. A dll can be written to execute specific queries and return the results or provide a generic SQL functionality which is OK for small result sets.
At the webserver end, we use cgi programs, written in Kylix or Python, which call method made avaialble by the SOAP server and its modules. For Kylix, we have a SOAPSQLQuery component that can be used rather like and other Delphi/Kylix dataset components.
This means that we can use information from the database to provide access to information via web browsers on desktops running Windows or Linux.
The SOAP server is now used for all database access, irrespective of the OS of the querying machine, to provide flexibility for the future. For example, Word and a Word add-in that gets name and address info for letters can easily be replaced by OpenOffice on Linux and a Java component because the actual database access is performed by the SOAP server and the SOAP interface is constant and simple to use.
Is Perl syllable or stress timed?
Haikus only really work with syllable timed languages. Having said this, US Perl is probably less strongly stressed than other Perls. Perhaps, there could be a Perl limerick contest for those whose Perl is more strongly stressed?
I think the word needed is pentantic.
How well to Presidential residences burn in the Martian atmosphere? :-)
It is not a surprising desire at all for a mooncalf.
Some Irish-Americans, perhaps, acting as private citizens. That's like blaming Germany because Muslims living in Germany contributed heavily to Al-Queda. That doesn't fly.
Yeah and I suppose funding of Al Qaeda by private US citizens is not illegal? It's more like blaming a country for taking no action against its citizens who collude in the murder of innocent men, women and children.
Personally, I'd recommend allowing NI a referendum on joining Ireland, as that would solve the whole problem.
Hell, why didn't successive UK governments think of that? Because the vote would go in favour of NI remaining in the UK, check out the demographics, and the aggrieved would remain aggrieved and the Unionists would be even more instransigent. For goodness sake, the maniac Paisley just got the biggest share of the vote in the elections for the NI assembly and he is virulently against the Good Friday agreement.
The election results are here. Note that the republicans of all flavours got 42 seats against 59 for Unionists with 6 for the Alliance (we love everybody) Party and one independent!.
If it was exactly the same, the re-examination provisions would not exist. The key word is "may". The Commissioner may also simply ignore it. If you are serious about getting a patent revoked, you need to pay the fees.
This provision enables but does not require.
Did they pay the re-exmination fee (item 1813)?
Did they fill in the form?
Did they get someone who knew what they were doing to make the request?
Looks like no, no, no to me."Innovation" is just another way of saying new idea. Electronic and mechanical inventions all start with an idea about how to do something. The patent protects against others using the same idea in their products and processes.
Yes you would, assuming no one had used those same settings before and the setting were not obvious from what had been done or described before.
You might have a claim like this:
A method of producing a widget, the method comprising:
setting up an Lathe Co. XXX lathe as follows
[list of settings]
processing at workpiece with the lathe until a widget is produced.
You were more correct initially.
The current law is EPC and national laws that are based on the EPC. The European Patent Office is not related to the EU.
All EU states are EPC contracting states but not all EPC states are EU states, e.g. Switzerland and Turkey.
The EU cannot change the statutory definition of what is patentable because this would conflict with the member states obligations under the EPC or creating a situation where nation patents are granted on a different basis to European patents, which would not make things clearer. However, it can change the law in EU states that relate to enforcement and can exclude some acts from the definition of infringement, e.g. acts for ensuring interoperability as proposed and private non-commercial use in UK law.
Theoretically, the EPC member states are meant to harmonise their interpretation of Art. 52(2) EPC. However, in the absence of EPO Board of Appeal decisions being binding precedent, there is a tendency for different countries to interpret Art. 52(2) EPC differently. The UK is a real culprit in this respect and has some decisions that are out of step with the EPO Boards of Appeal but binding on the UK patent office and lower UK courts.
The EU legislation is aimed at harmonising the interpretation of Art. 52(2) EPC and equivalent national law provisions in respect of computer-implementing inventions in the patent offices and courts of the EU states.
The basis of the standardisation is the interpretation established by the Boards of Appeal of the EPO.
The distinction is subtle. The aim is not to get everyone singing from the same song sheet, they do that already, but to get everyone singing in tune. Tbis is all explained here
.