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A patent obstacle in Germany
Readers who made it all the way through the OSRM article may be wondering:
what harm can a list of potential patent problems do, anyway? Consider
this: in Munich, the Green Party, which is a steadfast opponent of software
patents, compiled a list of patents which could be infringed by the city's
future Linux-based IT system, should software patents be enacted in
Europe. That list is available as
a German-language PDF file. The intent was clearly to spread awareness
of the potential consequences of software patents in Europe.
The tactic may have worked a little too well: the first request for bids in the Munich project has been put on hold while the city examines its legal risks. At this time, Munich apparently remains committed to the change, but the process will be slowed down while the lawyers do their thing. The European Union has not, yet, adopted software patents, but software patents are already complicating life anyway. Given events in much of the rest of the world, Europe is about all that stands in the way of a worldwide software patent regime. If software patents can be stopped there, there may be a chance of, someday, reforming the system elsewhere. If Europe falls, the job gets harder for everybody. So the upcoming, presumably final battle over the EU patent directive is critically important. There are signs that European governments are beginning to understand the problem. If making the issue clearer requires a delay in a high-profile municipal Linux deployment, it may turn out to be a price well paid. (Log in to post comments)
A patent obstacle in Germany Posted Aug 5, 2004 6:44 UTC (Thu) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link] The situation I'm fearing is that US companies will push all of their patent portfolios onto Europe and European IT-companies cannot take patents bordering on similar things because there's prior art as US patents...
The result:
The news that half of the patents that go to court are overturned and it takes approximately 3 million (dollars) to do that (which is lost money because you don't get damages when you overturn a incompetently accepted patent) is an eye opener. Which little IT firms have N*3 million as *spare* money to overturn bogus patents they're threatened with?
Heh, patents might actually be OK, if patent office granting the patent would need to pay half of the court costs as damages to both the company whose granted patent got overturned, and to company who needed to overturn it. That would teach patent offices a bit about the economic effect of patents, and by encouraging them to do proper prior art research raise patenting costs so much that companies would apply only for real patents...
A patent obstacle in Germany Posted Aug 5, 2004 7:05 UTC (Thu) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link] <rant>Some additional results I just thought about: 1. You cannot start-up new IT-companies, at least for making products, because everything is already patented. Only thing you can do is contract work for large, already existing companies who will own the copyrights and patents for your work 2. It's not economically viable to do that kind of work in Europe, India and other Asian countries will be able to do that kind of contract work cheaper
It's smaller and growing firms that account for most of the growth in employment. Patents will result in hugely increasing unemployment in Europe when every product on earth gets more and more software inside it because they basically monopolize these small firms out.
I think somebody should round up pro-patent politicians and hang them for treason (or stupidity if they claim ignorance).
A patent obstacle in Germany Posted Aug 5, 2004 8:46 UTC (Thu) by simlo (subscriber, #10866) [Link] ...there's prior art as US patents...Funny you say that: The US system doesn't accept European prior art. I know that from wind turbines. Enron's wind energy department, now owned by GE, has a patent of using frequency transformers in wind turbines in the US and Canada hindering European companies (like the one I work for) to sell their most effective turbines to the North American market. (The company I work for sells 2MW turbines the world market, but in the US the same turbine can only make 1.8MW.) But this technique was applied here in Denmark long before Enron started making wind turbines!
No, patents is not only a problem in software - just must worse there.
A patent obstacle in Germany Posted Aug 6, 2004 6:21 UTC (Fri) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link] Is this US protectionism or just normal US patent office incompetence in prior art checking? :-)
(If former, why nobody's made an issue out of it?)
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