[Patents] Re: [Patents] Re: [Patents] Do software patents exisit in Europe?

[Jean-Jacques de Jong jean-jacques_de-jong@hp.com]

Bernard, please, you are too simplistic.
The law does not forbid it! It only forbids it under certain
circumstances. 
The problem is that these circumstances are not clear and are subject to
interpretation by the boards of appeal of the EPO.

JJJ


Bernard Lang wrote:
> 
> very simple
> 
> the law forbids it
> 
> the EPO (european patent office) scorns the law
> 
> the same say they need to change the law in order to do legally
> what they are already doing
> 
> the purpose is to strech the law further, since they have reach the
> point where it would break.
> 
> ...  and no one cares to know what is really needed
> '
> Bernard Lang
> 
> On Tue, Dec 07, 1999 at 08:33:17AM -0000, Richard Morrey wrote:
> >
> > Reading information on the freepatents.org website I get the impression 
> > that
> > Sofware Patents have yet to be authorised in europe.
> >
> > However UNISYS already claim to have european patent EP0800726 on their
> > LZW compression algorithm used in GIF.
> >
> > Can anyone square this circle for me?
> >
> 
> --
> Bernard.Lang@inria.fr             ,_  /\o    \o/    Tel  +33 1 3963 5644
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