Re: [Patents] Summary of legal arguments

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

>   His interpretation of 52-2 and -3 is that computer programs as such
> means computer programs as listings.  He pretended that that is what
> had always been meant by this expression.

Apart from being absurd, this assertion is refuted by simply quoting the
EPO guidelines of 1978

        http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/epo-gl78/

and of course many other texts.  Even the recent BGH decision which in
principle seems to have removed the barrier to computer program claims in
Germany at the same time clarified that 'programs for computers' does not
refer to a listing or "the source code", but to an abstract method, a
teaching to do something using a computer.  The BGH decision said that a
rejection of a claim cannot be based on the claim form but only on a
reasoning as to whether the teaching pertains only to such a teaching
(method of computing) or to something beyond that.

Note: In responding to this, the BPatG could very well argue that the
object under discussion is not more than a computing method and therefore
not technical and not patentable, no matter in which claim form.  As a
rule, of course, I would say that anyone who needs a computer program
claim thereby proves that his "invention", no matter in which claim form,
consists in nothing more than a computer program.  But the BGH didn't say
that, nor did it explicitely deny it.

-- 
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/