How about in Europe?

Posted Oct 15, 2022 4:18 UTC (Sat) by fw (subscriber, #26023)
In reply to: How about in Europe? by fraetor
Parent article: The disabling of hardware codecs in community distributions

The claims usually cover a processor doing something, or storage media containing something. Technically, they are not about software. Even in the U.S., I don't think anyone writes software-only claims these days.

What can be patented is not actually that interesting, it matters more how infringement occurs. And the current situation in Europe is that software vendors can be liable even though infringement only happens once their software runs on some piece of hardware they have not made, sold, or provided in any other way. This is not as preposterous as it may sound because it's not uncommon for infringement to occur only after multiple hardware parts and manufacturing steps have been combined along a supply chain. Without some form of liability for contributory infringement, it would just be too easy to avoid most patents.

How about in Europe?

Posted Oct 15, 2022 15:05 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> This is not as preposterous as it may sound because it's not uncommon for infringement to occur only after multiple hardware parts and manufacturing steps have been combined along a supply chain. Without some form of liability for contributory infringement, it would just be too easy to avoid most patents.

Except that, combining a patentable item with a non-patentable item IS NOT PATENTABLE.

So, if software is not patentable, running software cannot infringe.

We just need to persuade the courts this is settled law ...

Cheers,
Wol

How about in Europe?

Posted Oct 17, 2022 20:52 UTC (Mon) by zoobab (guest, #9945) [Link]

Software Patents in Europe are coming back through the installation of the Unified Patent Court, where Germany should ratify and launch the court in mid-December.

This court will replace National Courts, where some of them have hostile jurisprudence against software patenting, like the French Courts.

The problem is that there won't be an appeal possible to the European Court of Justice (CJEU) possible, since the EU is not part of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA), it's a deal between some Member States and not the EU.

So patent law is left to specialized patent courts, highly dangerous for society as we saw with the US example, before the Supreme Court intervene in the Alice decision.

The Unified Patent Court project is also legally flawed, as it claimed to be a 'common court', while the jurisprudence of the CJEU says 'common courts' need to have a link with National Courts, the guardians of EU law together with the CJEU:

https://ffii.org/unified-patent-court-wont-survive-a-lega...

We should convince a government to challenge this 'common court' and the validity of the Brussels1 regulation at the CJEU, preferably before this treaty enters into force.

Governments are also magouilling the entry into force to ignore the requirement of the UK:

http://patentblog.kluweriplaw.com/2022/04/21/upc-four-rea...