IBM's patent offensive [LWN.net]

IBM's patent offensive

Posted Aug 14, 2003 4:56 UTC (Thu) by aaa27 (guest, #13650)
Parent article: IBM's patent offensive

How do patents work with repsect to other countries? I remember learning the French (or even the European) office was quite careful in giving out patents (much more than in the US) and up to recently, didn't give software patents. The patents were assumed to (garanteed to?) hold in court.

When you fill in for a patent, you specify for which country it is for.
I don't know how works the extension process for a protection worldwide (what are the relevant patent offices, but I doubt US patents are taken as is and not carefully studied by the European Patent Office)

So my guess is for now there is no patent issue in Europe (yet?). And you are perfectly allowed to use something protected by a patent in country A if you are in country B where that patent has not been taken (or granted).
That could possibely lead to software being legal in some countries, and deemed infringing in others.

Also, patents were kept secret for a while (2-3 years) then published.

All I hope is that Europe turns down software patents.

--
André

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IBM's patent offensive

Posted Aug 14, 2003 8:46 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (subscriber, #2814) [Link]

This is one of the major fights in Europe right now - the fight against software patents. So far "we" haven't been doing that well :(

Another big issue: Even though software patents isn't really allowed in Europe, thousands exists anyway :(

Basically, you're sadly mistaken if you think software patents isn't a problem here :(

More info can be found here:
http://swpat.ffii.org/ and/or http://www.eurolinux.org/

IBM's patent offensive

Posted Aug 14, 2003 9:41 UTC (Thu) by dps (subscriber, #5725) [Link]

Software has been patentable in the EU or so I heard---provided you made into a physical device and then sue people for "equivalent" software. Some people have suggested measures like putting it on a hard disc or whatever might be sufficient.

Personally if it *really is an invention* then I do not see why algorithms should not be patentable. Unfortunately 98% of the software patents I have heard about are not bona fide inventions, given that everything already patented and otherwise published is "obvious". (Execptions are things like Lempel-Zif, RSA, IDEA and that sort of thing).

Challenging patents is easier the EU: there is at least one case where the US goverment and a multinational corporation acting together were denied a european patent. There is no need for a commercial dispute to challenge a patent in the EU, as I understand is required in the US.