[Patents] exclusion of interfaces?

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> > There is no patent on ASF or MP3.  There are just patents on some
> > principles that happen to be necessary for ASF and MP3.  When looking at
> > the patent application there is no way to determine whether this belongs
> > to a standard or not.
>
> Taking your comments into account, a solution could be to allow
> infrigment on patents when it is absolutely necessary for
> compatibility or interoperability. This is similar to the exception
> that allows reverse engineering, and has exactly the same spirit:
> reverse engineering is normally forbidden to protect the ideas of the
> programmer. It would be a contradiction that this law could be
> circunvented by patenting interfaces. Although with my proposal it
> would be posible to patent an interface, it would not be against the
> law to use it for interoperability with existing programs. For
> example, it would be illegal to use the ideas of ASF for designing my

designing .. => using / distributing / promoting.
The patent system is not concerned with what you design privately or for
research purposes.

> own protocol, but it would be perfectly legal to read an existing ASF
> stream.

Right.  This is initiative 2 of the letter

        http://swpat.ffii.org/xatra/patg2C/

Current law is already close to this, but not clear enough.

-phm