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New Zealand case ... | 210 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
New Zealand case ...
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 23 2013 @ 02:38 AM EDT
Wriggle room so that software patents can be, and when the correct bribes are
paid, will be granted.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

New Zealand case ...
Authored by: dio gratia on Tuesday, April 23 2013 @ 03:18 AM EDT
As a concerned NZ resident I'd take a certain amount of solace from Glyn Moody's blog article Software Patents Storming Up the Agenda Again:
The German Parliament has passed a joint motion against the growing trend of patent offices to grant patents on software programs. The resolution on “Secure Competition and Innovation in the software development,” obliges the German government to take steps to ensure that software is protected by copyright only and no additional patent protection is granted.

Here's what it says about the EPO [.pdf]:

in practice patents are being granted - in particular by the European Patent Office (EPO) - with effects on computer programs in which the patenting of pure data processing ideas are presented nominally as "technical procedures" or "technical devices" with explicit claims made on these processes as found in computer programs. The number of software-related patents granted by the EPO alone is estimated in the high five-figure range.

The motion rightly notes the dangers of software patents for developers:

This situation means for software developers considerable legal uncertainty: the abstractness of the claims has the result that a software-related patent affects all individual implementations of the protected solution in concrete computer programs. Computer programs that contain the patented technique may not be used commercially without the consent of the patent holder.

Interestingly, the solution proposed is to rely on copyright to protect programs not patents. The logic is that copyright protects the particular implementations of an idea, whereas patents monopolise the idea itself, thus preventing others from using it freely. Even better, the motion explicitly calls for open source to be protected.

The entire article is worth reading. As to why I take solace in it is that New Zealand appears at best reluctant to embrace software patents, likely in the face of the Trans Pacific Partnership ( TPP). If the idea catches on in Europe, New Zealand is less likely to catch the software patent flu.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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