Re: [Patents] Re: Microsoft in sofware patent trouble...

[David GLAUDE Mailing <dglaudemailing@gmx.net>]

PILCH Hartmut wrote:
> If you have a US patent number and want to find a corresponding
> EP number, one place to look is the German Patent Office's database
> at
>
>         http://www.depatisnet.de/
>
> Unfortunately they offer patent descriptions only as page per page chunks
> of graphic files, and they even explicitely warn that if you use any
> scripts to automatically download and concatenate those files, you are in
> violation of their database licensing terms and they will block your
> access.  A strange threat in view of the patent office's supposed mission
> of disseminating technical information.

I guess they use the Database Copyright Directive. That directive 
(whatever the name or number) create a new copyright for collection of 
Data. If you invest money to collect and organise data (even if all of 
those data are from public domain) then you can have a copyright on the 
Database that is so created.

That way europe protect your investment to make sure no-one do extract 
your data and re-publish it somehow.

I don't have to state here how much I am against that directive and the 
ill effect of it.

One thing is that this directive start to be used by newspaper to 
protect themself against Deep Link (like when you send a link to a 
specific article of interest in this mailing list or publish that 
somewhere on a web site).

I don't have to state here how much I am against those that want to 
banish deep link from the web. I wish we will not be forced to link to 
home page only in a near futur.

But since this is another fight I think I should give you a link to 
http://wiki.ael.be/ and from there if you search for deep link you might 
find some information. As for the directive, if you go for 
http://www.europarl.eu.int/ and you search you might find the directive 
I am talking about.

But let's focus on the directive we are against. ;-)

David GLAUDE