From marmalade@x-stream.co.uk Tue, 7 Dec 1999 23:09:41 -0000
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 23:09:41 -0000
From: Nick Fleming marmalade@x-stream.co.uk
Subject: [Patents] Re: [Patents] Re: [Patents] Re: [Patents] Do software patents exisit in Europe?

>Bernard, please, you are too simplistic.
>The law does not forbid it! It only forbids it under certain
>circumstances. 


Actually, simplistic seems to be how the
various patent offices see the software problem
 As Bernard points out, "they need to change the
law in order to do what they are already doing".
Case in point, the British Patent Office has
already admitted to granting software patents, 
mainly to stay in step with the EPO - despite
their own employees telling me they do not
grant 'pure' software patents. I am still trying
to figure out how such actions can be considered
legal. So how come there are patents on things
such as LZW compression ? Simply because
Unisys asked for it, and because they were able
to word the application so it fit the letter, if not the
spirit, of the patent 'laws'. Also, patent searches
tend to be fairly limited (and in the Americans
system- slow) and the resources for such searches
are not unlimited.
    The Americans do have a solution - patent everything.
This seems absurd at first, until you realise just
how much stuff becomes public domain in a relatively
short space of time if the patent laws are fairly flexible.
Companies such as IBM will patent everything because
they need the immediate legal protection from
competitors, which saves everyone else from doing
the same in the long run.
It doesn't quite work for software though, as writing ANY
piece of software will potentially infringe on thousands
of patents. I'm currently writing a (freeware) text editor,
and I'm being very careful what I put into it. I was hoping
to have it finished this side of Christmas but the prior art
searches are taking up a little more time that I anticipated.
Imagine how much effort is involved in checking a full scale, 
industrial strength  application and you have some idea
of the magnitude of the problem.  Simple as that.

Merry Xmas!

NickF.






