IBM's patent offensive

IBM's patent offensive

Posted Aug 14, 2003 9:41 UTC (Thu) by dps (subscriber, #5725)
In reply to: IBM's patent offensive by aaa27
Parent article: IBM's patent offensive

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.

---

(Log in to post comments)