FAT patents in europe

FAT patents in europe

Posted Dec 9, 2003 10:49 UTC (Tue) by dps (subscriber, #5725)
Parent article: Microsoft aiming IBM-scale patent program at Linux? (Register)

IANAL but have heard something about patents and copyright.
- Patents cover ideas and claiming you came up with it independlty out of pure woodsmoke are not defence.
- Copytights cover expressions of ideas. If I can prove I wrote my word for word indepentical novel independently on pure woodsmoke, you have no case. (In such an extreme exmaple really solid evidence of pure woodsmoke might be advisable).

Indeed you can copyright almost anything, for example some bits of german countryside (albeit bits that were being passed off as many places nowhere near germany).

Almost everywhere except the US *everything* patented and otherwise published is "obvious" and therefore can not be patented. AS such the 1990 articles would make the FAT patents impossible in EU even if you worked around the "not software" requirement---putting the algorithm or data format in a device or on an IC, for example (courts have held a licnce is required for software implementations of the alogrihtm on your patented IC).

There is a least one case of the US government and a large biotechnology company being denied a patent in the EU due to prior art. Somehow the prior art, which predated the US filing date by many years, failed to sink the US patent AFAIK.

In the US you can restrict the scope of "obvious" to things not published by yourself (but not exclude other people's comments on what you publish). This is why RSA was only ever patented in the US. The IDEA people did not publish prior to filing and did get both european and US patents.

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