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.
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Roberto Galoppini
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Dale Halling
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Roberto Galoppini
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.
Roberto Galoppini, 
Roberto Galoppini
Software Patents are Back!
The European Commission brings back software patents, this time through a via a centralized patent court, the European and Community Patents Court (draft agreement).
This court – if the draft will get approved at the next competitiveness meeting of May 28-29 – will have exclusive jurisdiction in respect of patent infringements.
Roberto Galoppini
European Software Patents: the War is Over
The Software Patents war is finally over, glad open source cluster technology made it possible.
Brussels & Munich, 1st April 2009 — After years of confidential work, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) today announce a radical way to improve software patent quality: Binaries-As-Prior-Art, or BAPA. BAPA combines a database of billions of compiled computer programs (“binaries”) with a powerful Cloud search engine that can find any invention in microseconds.
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Dido
Wonderfull fish, Roberto 🙂
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Seth Grimes
Chief Engineer B.U. Scotty, eh?
Beam me up!
Douglas Henderson
Hello, from Maine –
While much of the text was beyond me (being a 71 year old Pianola roll arranger), I got the gist and was aware of the lawsuits via articles in The Register (U.K.).
Thanks to your sharing that URL I gained a little more understanding of this emerging field.
Best wishes, Douglas
Roberto Galoppini
Dear Douglas, I fooled you apparently, but you are not the only one! Few IT people asked before, kudos to FFII friends to have written such a good fool of April!
Carlo Piana
I must admit this is the only April’s Fool that actually started fooling me. Very well done, FFII! And Thanks Roberto for sharing! 🙂
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.