Re: [Patents] newsscan: Software patent limits 'go too far'

[Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron@free.fr>]

Well, I will take an example :)

The article 1134-3 of the french civil code states that "contracts must
be executed with good faith". 

What does it mean?!? 

For current law students, it means that contracts must be executed
without cheating, ok...

For people 40 years ago it meant that contracts belonged to a category
of roman law contracts called "good faith acts"... a completely
different meaning.

What happened is that, in France, oil compagnies were trapping their
distributors with contracts implying so big penalties that they could
not quit the oil compagnies. Then they were just selling their oil to
distributors at such a high price that distributors were neither able to
make profit nor able to quit the contract and search for another job...

But then, french judges just decided that article 1134-3 should be read
in another way... pouf Magic! The new meaning was that you should not
use a contract to trap people like this. It took some years and the new
interpretation became the new rule after some evolution... a new
consensus appeared.

This is what happened with the EPO (except it was a bad evolution). The
first interpretation of the law (patentibility forbidden and narrow
exception) became a second one (patentibility forbidden but wide
exception) and were close to give birth to a third one (patentibility
allowed)... when people realized that they could not accept this and
decided not to let it go any further. 

But, whatever the new law project states... there will always be ways to
turn around. That's why, this new project is not a victory in itself. A
victory would be that people actually realize that software can't be
subject to patents which is not yet the case! Do you see what I mean? 

Voila, voila... 

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
CNRS - CERSA Paris 2

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 17:21:45 -0400
Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> wrote:

> 
> Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 14:56:32 +0100
> > Rui Miguel Seabra <rms@1407.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > Oh I see, then that must be why there's software patent related
> > > court cases here and there in the USA but not really on Europe...
> > 
> > Unfortunately, irony is useless in this...
> 
> 
> But, but . . .
> 
> Maybe I'm wrong!  What if "as such" *doesn't* mean software is
> something different?
> 
> Gawrsh I don't know . . .
> 
> :-)
> 
> Seth
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
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