| I hereby irrevocably relinquish all copyrights I may own in this post for use by
anyone with or without attribution. And if anyone has improvements, go for
it.
RMS has identified a great quote from the Hitachi automated auction
case decision in the European Patent Office ("EP0"). It really deserves to be
publicized widely so people can better understand the software patent
issue.
I will post this twice, once in HTML and once in plain text so folks
can easily clip the quotation along with some other links I've added, for use on
other web sites.
Ever wonder why so many software developers are so
disturbed by software patents? Part of the reason is that according to the
patent courts, language itself is now patentable. The patent courts now allow
the languages used by software developers to be patented. Could you get any work
done if you had to pay for every word you used? Think we're joking? Read on:
4.6 The Board is aware that its comparatively broad interpretation
of the term "invention" in Article 52(1) EPC will include activities which are
so familiar that their technical character tends to be overlooked, such as the
act of writing using pen and paper.
Hitachi
automatic auction method, T0258/03-3.5.1, Boards of Appeal of the European
Patent Office, pg. 16 (April 21, 2004); (PDF) (construing E.U. Patent
Convention Article
52.)
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Suggested further reading:
- Pa
tent Absurdity, by Free Software Foundation leader Richard M. Stallman,
in The Guardian (June 20, 2005).
- The Most Important
Software Innovations, by David A. Wheeler (May 25, 2005) (concluding
that nearly all true innovations in the software field were never
patented).
- Sequential Innovation,
Patents, and Imitation, by James Bessen and Eric Maskin, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Economics Department working paper (January 2000)
(concluding that software patent protection may reduce overall innovation and
social welfare).
- Art 52 EPC:
Interpretation and Revision, Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure (web page collecting numerous legal papers tracing the patent
courts' complete reversal of the European Patent Convention's provision
prohibiting software patents.
- Software Patent News, Foundation
for a Free Information Infrastructure worldwide software patent news roundup
with emphasis on Europe (updated daily; RSS feeds in several European
languages).
- GrokL
aw - Patent Stories in the News, Groklaw worldwide patent news roundup with
emphasis on North America (updated weekly; RSS feed in English
available).
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Retired lawyer [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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