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Taken out of context and grossly misinterpretedTaken out of context and grossly misinterpretedPosted Aug 16, 2010 13:18 UTC (Mon) by FlorianMueller (subscriber, #32048)In reply to: Taken out of context and grossly misinterpreted by shmget Parent article: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android (ars technica)
You made good points but let me add legal precision to some of them. Conditioning the sale of product A to the sale of product B is called bundling and is illegal, at least in TurboHercules Jurisdiction. (see CODE DE LA CONSOMMATION, Article L122-1 Under the presumably corresponding Article 102 TFEU, it's illegal if it unfairly disadvantages customers, and the requirement for that article to be applicable is a dominant market position. IBM has a mainframe monopoly, and a monopoly is the ultimate form of market dominance. By contrast, it would be much harder to claim that Apple has a dominant market position. he whole patent things is irrelevant to TurboHercules situation, at least in its jurisdiction: EPC, Article 52(1)(c) explicitly exclude from patentability "schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers" This is transposed in the national law of TurboHercule jurisdiction in the article L611-10(2)(c) of the "Code de la propriété intellectuelle" You are right that software patents can often be invalidated in the EU on the grounds of patentable subject matter and the exclusion you correctly cited. Unfortunately, there are ever more court decisions in different parts of Europe that uphold them. Nevertheless, it's true that tying (bundling) is at the heart of the TurboHercules matter and it's just IBM trying to portray it as a patent issue, with some aggressive rhetoric that is no substitute for facts.
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