Re: [Patents] Summary of legal arguments

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> The economic and social questions of whether government should grant
> patents on software are not important here - I just want an analysis of
> whether swpats are legal in the EU now.  It should be accessible to the
> layman (ie, the students taking the course) and written in English.  I
> have scoured the ffii site and found lots of interesting papers and
> careful analyses of the EPO's decisions, but unfortunately they are all
> in German.

A few relevant papers on there have English versions, such as

        http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/patpruef/indexen.html
        (written by a patent examiner, very unpolemic and sharp at the
        same time)

        http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/korcu/indexen.html

One fairly short and non-partisan paper written by a lawyer to show the
untenability of the EPO's interpretation of Art 52 should perhaps be
translated to English by someone:

        http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/epc52/exeg/

Also, the english translations of some of the earlier German court rulings
should also be useful

        http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/bgh-dispo76/indexen.html
        http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/bgh-walzst80/indexen.html

They can at least help to 'dispell some of the myths' such as that 'the
courts at the time didn't understand computer programs' or 'the legislator
didn't know what he was doing and meant to leave interpretation to the
EPC'.  Although the historical interpretation is only a fairly weak
method, it is the only one that the myth-building lawyers are relying on
currently, because it is the only one where the layman (non-lawyer) does
not normally have access to knowledge that could refute the myth
instantly.

The "stealing with a futher righteous effect" page

        http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/epc52/moses/

may sound partisan, but on the other hand it directly references EPO
developments and makes them understandable in a way that is more difficult
to express without satire.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch                                          http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
100,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/