Re: [Patents] debugging

[Jozef Halbersztadt <halber@idea.net.pl>]

Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:

> El Thu, May 29, 2003 at 10:05:31PM +0200, halber@idea.net.pl deia:
>
>  
>
> > In spite of the Guidelines Arlene Mccarthy is right.
> [...]
>  
>
> > In 4 from 5 cases Munich in its decisions is blindly following 
> > Washington. There is nothing new in this mirroring. It is 15 years    old phenomena. 
> >    
>
> But McCarthy did not say it's 15 years old, she said it's nearly 30 
> (from the EPO earliest days).  
With the earliest days is almost true. Because the EPO was opened at May 1978 
and VICOM was filled in May 1979 (EP00005954).  The proceedings lasted 8 
years (corespondence at examinig stage, various stages of appeal etc.). Only 
therefore they didn't start officially to change course until 1987.

> She may be right in that "patents involving software" have always 
> been granted by the EPO, but only if you understand that to mean
> patents for technical inventions were software was mentioned, not
> monopolised. I mean you can always distinguish "patents involving software" from "patents on 
> software". They were of course not called "computer-implemented inventions " in the "earliest 
> days".
You are right because they waited for Washington to be so "open minded". 
It is also true that almost all Adobe Acrobat patent from the list were 
granted in Europe in late 90's.
But I derserve a credit as well. I delivered a list of 21 patents in one 
product.

> > Note please, that during hearings of 1994 Adobe was against software 
> > patents.
>
> It's that story about the mayor selling guns and you trying to get the best gun even if you don't like that policy ?. 
>
>  
No, the story is from IBM. I do think that during the hearings Adobe was 
really on  non-patent side.