Software Patents are Back: Software AG
Software AG released a survey carried out by the Technical University of Darmstadt, stating that, among other practical recommendations, software patents are needed to protect innovation.
Protecting intangible property still represents a difficulty for software patents in Germany and the EU.
A program cannot be patented as such, resulting in unintentional knowledge transfer from the cluster
and inhibiting the reinvestment of the profits gained from innovation in the cluster. The political world
can improve the basic conditions of software innovation in Germany by allowing software patents.
Two months ago FFII expressed concerns over the European and Community Patents Court, reading Software AG press release I confirmed the impression that software patents are likely to be back in Europe.
Roberto Galoppini, 
Glyn Moody (glynmoody) 's status on Monday, 06-Jul-09 20:50:37 UTC - Identi.ca 9:50 pm on July 6, 2009 Permalink
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Dale Halling 3:39 pm on July 11, 2009 Permalink
The arguments against software patents have a fundamental flaw. As any electrical engineer knows, solutions to problems implemented in software can also be realized in hardware, i.e., electronic circuits. The main reason for choosing a software solution is the ease in implementing changes, the main reason for choosing a hardware solution is speed of processing. Therefore, a time critical solution is more likely to be implemented in hardware. While a solution that requires the ability to add features easily will be implemented in software. As a result, to be intellectually consistent those people against software patents also have to be against patents for electronic circuits. For more information on patents and innovation see http://www.hallingblog.com.
Roberto Galoppini 10:47 am on July 13, 2009 Permalink
Hi Dale, thank you to join the conversation. I see you’re a patent attorney and an electrical engineer, I got a computer science degree and my background doesn’t help me much when it comes to talk about electronic circuits.
So said, I live in Europe and software patents are not (yet) legal on this side of the pond. Most of us are happy with that, given how little software patents are welcome by US IT entrepreneurs (see this book on intellectual property and open source for more information). I understand that lawyers, or some of them, are in favour of software patents, but there is no evidence of how they helped innovation so far. Many IT companies, included the big ones, publicly stated how software patents mostly are causing damages, only few players take (real?) advantage of them in ritualized warfares, but this is definitely not about innovation.