German High Court Declares All Software Patentable 330
FlorianMueller writes "Long gone are the times when Europe was that bastion of resistance against software patents and patents on such things as file systems were ruled invalid. In a decision published today, the Federal Court of Justice of Germany upheld a patent on the automatic generation of structured documents (such as XML/HTML) in a client-server setting. The ruling lays out general principles that go beyond the patent at stake: they tear down all barriers to software patentability in the largest EU member state, even though a European patent treaty has been adopted that was intended to exclude software from the scope of patentable subject matter. EU patent examiners recently warned against a drift toward software patents. Software patent critics in Europe fear this will spark more litigation on their continent and increasingly call for defensive measures."
Hello World (Score:2)
Time to go patent "Hello World" and get rich!
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I think there's some established prior art there.
As for the automatic generation of structured documents, isn't there also tons of prior art there? How old is that patent? Isn't source code structured? Automatic code generation is quite ancient.
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In this case it was about a special method to generate code on the fly for a computing limited device. Not the automatic code generation itself was patented, but a method to use scripts inside documents on a device whose processing capabilities didn't allow the installation of a full fledged script interpreter stack.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> Isn't source code structured? Automatic code generation is quite ancient.
Yeh, but this patent is on doing that on a *limited resource* computer.
Code generation might be decades old, but do you really think anyone thought of doing code generation on a computer with less then 2Gb of RAM and less than a 1Ghz processor in the 70s or 80s?
Hat's off to Siemens for this stroke of genius.
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Or alternately, one step closer to this scenario [theonion.com].
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Well, "Hello World" happens to be one of the very first programs ever made and has plenty of prior art.
IMHO one of the biggest problems with the patent system in regards to software and biomedical products is that those two areas of the industry are incredibly new, so many obvious/trivial advancements are patented right away. Give it some time when many of the obvious software patents and biomedical patents have entered the public domain and the system will work much better as it does for mechanical device
Re:Hello World (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, "Hello World" happens to be one of the very first programs ever made and has plenty of prior art.
That's never stopped patent offices from awarding a patent anyway.
Noooooooo ! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly, when the patent process was started, all the politicians could think about were sucking on the teet of the large corporations.
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Exactly, when the patent process was started, all the politicians could think about were sucking on the teet of the large corporations.
Are you talking about the patent process in the US, which started in 1790, or the patent process in the world, which started in 500 BC?
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Would it make a difference in regards to my sarcastic remark?
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"Patents are designed to protect the RnD investment of large wealthy businesses."
And not useless patents with obvious prior art that wasn't the result of RnD investments.
Re:Noooooooo ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Small inventors who want to work on stuff they can't bring to market by themselves do benefit, because without patents it's very hard for them to get money together in secrecy to get a lead on the market. That said, the damage it does to small (software) engineering companies by making any little project they do trip over a dozen of patents means it still is not worth it.
As for big companies, they might benefit from being able to throw up barriers to entry ... but slowly but surely it's becoming apparent that "it protects the big guys" was just a way the lawyers used to sell it to the big companies. Being able to throw up patent walls doesn't protect you from being bled dry by patent trolls.
In the end there is only one group who benefits from patents and suffers no negative results ... lawyers.
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Small inventors who want to work on stuff they can't bring to market by themselves do benefit, because without patents it's very hard for them to get money together in secrecy to get a lead on the market
And without money, it's very hard for them to defend their patents in court, especially with all these other big companies claiming a patent on the same thing.
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Show me the software! (Score:2)
IMO, something patentable is a thing. I can see a pair of new-design siccors. I can understand a gene or even biotech seed. But software is not a thing. It doesn't exist.
#include<stdio.h>
main()
{
printf("Hello Kai");
}
That is written. It is not a patenable process. Unless a (patented) processor interprests the code, it is only words.
Is it copyrightable? Yes.
If you make
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If you make
I think you
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Did you two both just accidentaly the whole thing?
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Isn't such a small "Hello Kai" too small to be copyrightable at all? Try to copyright a simple sentence a la "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." You'll notice that what constitutes a copyrightable work isn't so straightforward as one may naively think (and it varies greatly from legislation to legislation, despite the Bern Convention).
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I do not think length matters. Take David McCord's poem "Epitaph on a Waiter". The poem is shorter than its title.
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The point was that it is text and that it isn't something tangible other than the media upon which the text is being held. Even if you break it down into machine code, it is still text.
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This patent idea is so ridiculus. IMO, something patentable is a thing. I can see a pair of new-design siccors. I can understand a gene or even biotech seed. But software is not a thing. It doesn't exist.
Your definition is, unfortunately, different then from the general term. Processes have almost always been patentable, and aren't, themselves, 'things'.
The only difference then is if the process outputs something tangible (production process, gene patents) or not (algorithms, software).
Personally, I don't think software patents are any more 'broken' than other patents. I just think that when the patent office grants a ridiculous software patent, it's more egregious than a ridiculous device patent. It se
Time for another web protest (Score:5, Insightful)
Time for a bunch of web sites to close up shop for a day to remind how this will affect things on the web.
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Yep. If the summary is accurate then almost every site in the web would be illegal.
Just because some geriatric judge liked the cut of a particular lawyer's suit.
there once was a time (Score:5, Insightful)
when intellectual property law was meant to protect the solitary inventor from the predatory conglomerate. now the predatory conglomerate just preemptively carpet bombs their intellectual property territory and backs it up with a legion of lawyers. the solitary inventor doesn't stand a chance
intellectual property law is defunct. it is philosophically bankrupt and must be replaced wholesale, ignored, or at least radically revamped. this applies to trademark, copyright, and patents: the whole lot of it is rotten to the core and betrays any noble principles it was ever meant to uphold
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
While you are right about patents and copyrights, none of our grievances have any relation to the trademark law, which is used to prevent scam. Richard Stallman is right: stop using the words "intellectual property", you have no clear understanding of what they mean, because they are not intended to have a clear meaning.
huh? (Score:2)
you have no clear understanding of what they mean, because they are not intended to have a clear meaning
error in meaning process #4512: lack of internal logical coherence in statement detected. statement may be ironic, or speaker may be confused. abort, retry, fail?
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You are like a poster child for Stallman's rant about the evils of the term "IP". You are attacking the trademark law without realizing that it keeps you safe from Pepsi Cola that was made in your neighbor's bath tub. The only reason you are doing it is because you bought into the "IP" rhetoric. Throw your errors when you see people use the words "IP" to make an argument, not when they point out that "IP" is a useless umbrella term that only serves to confuse.
o rly? (tm) (Score:2)
2 stories before this one:
http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/05/20/1310248 [slashdot.org]
seems pretty abusive, no?
you and stallman fail because you assume trademark is the only weapon we have against the asshole selling bathtub bilge water as pepsi
stallman is entitled to his opinion, but he's not some god you have to obey without thinking the issue out yourself. read his argument again and THINK (tm)
k thx (tm)
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seems pretty abusive, no?
No. May be it's because you forgot to present any kind of argument. Patents and copyrights distort free market by cementing monopolies. They put a tax on all production and dissemination of new ideas, while giving nothing in return to the public. I cannot substantiate the last claim, but neither can anyone prove that patents and copyrights increase innovation or production. Without proof either way, these laws should be considered useless and bad, because they do cost a lot to us, the public, to enforce. Th
"sometimes used to stifle free expression" (Score:2)
thank you for making my argument for me
"trivial to circumvent"
and i'm glad that you also conclude like me that intellectual property law is defunct
(rolls eyes)
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Meh. At least we agree on what matters.
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Well, actually, I did claim just now that they are the only weapon against the bath tub guy, and I think this is true. Care to name a law that prevents me from pouring tub water into a can that says "Pepsi Cola" and taking that to the market?
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error in meaning process #4512: lack of internal logical coherence in statement detected. statement may be ironic, or speaker may be confused. abort, retry, fail?
The error is in your thinking. What the GP was saying: The term "Intellectual Property" intentionally has no clear meaning. Therefore it is not possible for there to exist a person with a clear understanding of the term, as to have a clear understanding requires the existence of a clear meaning.
The argument is valid, but the two premises, namely that clear understanding requires a clear meaning, and that "Intellectual Property" intentionally has no clear meaning, may still be up for debate.
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Though there are plenty of instances of stupidity in trademark laws as well. I almost fear that if software patents fall by the wayside, these same companies will start trademarking the look and feel all their software inventions.
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Now the solitary inventor has a new strategy: try to sell a patent to the conglomerates for big $$$. Or sell it to a patent troll.
In fact, patent trolls are the direct result of this switch. I dislike them as much as the next guy, but at least they're a force acting against those that are blatantly abusing their patents.
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As long as there is money to be made, there will be attempts to change the rules to make money more easily.
But I have a question: If you remove patents from software, that leaves you with what sort of licensing options? If I can find your source code, can I just rebrand your application and sell it like open source software? Can you apply a license like BSD, Apache, etc to it to prevent me, legally, from doing that even though your software idea isn't patented?
I think patents, as you said, were to defend
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What's the problem with trademark laws?
look at the story 2 below this one (Score:2)
thanks
http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/05/20/1310248 [slashdot.org]
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Problem with Copyrights and Patent are not the fact that they wrong however their punishment for breaking is no longer just.
Back in the old days Copyright Violators were really Corporations because in order to break the copyrights you needed an infrastructure to do this. So the fines for violations should be high, as someone made a lot of money with using someone elses IP without permission.
However today it is too easy to violate Copyrights and Patents we no longer need a huge infrastructure to do such jus
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Boycott Germany (Score:5, Insightful)
Start including a disclaimer in all license agreements, something to the effect of "This software may be in violation of German patent law and is therefore not available for use in that country"
Refuse to sell or license any software to anyone in that country who is not willing to sign a disclosure stating that they are fully aware of the implications of German patent law and are responsible for any violations that may occur.
Provide information for how to contact any German political organization that opposes software patents
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Someone should probably mention this to Munich
FYI, the German federal government is in Berlin, and the high court (Bundesgerichtshof) is in Karlsruhe.
Re:Boycott Germany (Score:5, Informative)
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Unfortunately, we don't elect our idiot judges. :(
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It's always been my opinion that projects like xvid and x264 should have a "may not be distributed in the United States" (and now also Germany) in the license. For something like Linux and GCC you might have a case when you say "well there are patents, but they aren't being litigated so who knows if they are valid" but for MPEG some of the patents are known to be litigated and known to have been declared valid in court.
Any copying being done for American (and now German) recipients for these projects is not
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It really wouldn't help--if anything, it would make things worse. Right now it's forbidden fruit. If it were completely unavailable, people simply wouldn't know about it, and wouldn't know what they were missing. There just aren't enough programmers in any given country for them alone to be a force for preventing this sort of stupidity. You have to get the end-users on board too.
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A better way would be to allow redistribution, but only if the redistributing party allows free use of any patents it owns for the code it is redistributing to anyone receiving that code, with a right to sublicense them further (so that they can in turn comply if they redistribute). But then you just get GPLv3.
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I'm perfectly aware of the idiocy I'm suggesting. I'm also Canadian so my reluctance to boycott the US is somewhat limited.
At some point we have to make a stand against this lunacy. It's now almost impossible to write code without being at the mercy of a patent troll.
Ruling as plaintext, with English translations (Score:2)
I html-ised it and made links to a few automatic translations:
It indeed looks like bad news.
More info on swpat.org (Score:5, Informative)
I'm working on documenting this, and the general German situation, here:
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help welcome.
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Where did the decision waive the requirement of a technical nature of the inventive step? Paragraph 27 states that technical means for solving a technical problem are existent, if the workings of a program are "determined by technical conditions outside of the data processing system" or if "the program considers technical conditions within the data processing system" - the latter being the reason for the decision. This is in line with "Seitenpuffer", for example.
As for a claim of a program "as such" - I wo
Thanks Germany! (Score:3, Funny)
First you unleash an insane dictator over most of Europe, encourage David Hasselhoff to keep singing (why?), think bailing out the Euro is a "good thing", produce annoyingly reliable cars and now decide software is patentable.
Thanks for nothing.
How to Fight This? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty shocking news to me as a German, because (naive as I am) I always considered the German High Court is halfway reasonable.
Could we perhaps fight software patents by getting completely ridiculous and untenable patents accepted and afterwards make this public? -- This could have the desired effect but is probably never going to happen, because the whole patenting process is a bit expensive. :(
In my opinion the whole idea that someone could dictate me what computational methods I use and sell is totally ridiculous. A lot of my work involves formal logic and methodology and I can't wait for the day when I'll publish a scientific paper that unbeknown to me infringes on some patent and then get sued for it. If this software patent idiocy continues, it will be impossible to teach any higher mathematics at university in 200 years from now without violating someone's patents, but I'm sure some companies already have licensing plans in the drawer for this scenario. Crazy...
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If this software patent idiocy continues, it will be impossible to teach any higher mathematics at university in 200 years from now without violating someone's patents
That's 20 years. All the signs are pointing that way. I am a professional mathematician, and I've been following the developments, and it does not look good. The maths are clearly next. It only makes sense: if they can patent algorithms, then they can already patent math. As it stands, no one can patent "abstract" ideas. Watch and see them say: "Oh, we just realized, math ideas are not abstract, they are hella concrete, so we will be patenting them now". For lawyers this will be a trivial hurdle to overcome
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What have you done to stop it? Do you know your representatives positions and voting histories on this issue?
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I am a citizen of Russian Federation. I'll start voting and caring in general when it actually makes a tiny bit of difference.
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I too worry about this. I see so many of the interesting patents in software are simply: The naive approach is exponential. The greedy approach does not work. Let me throw dynamic programing/divide and conquer/linear programming at it, oh look the complexity is now tenable. Let me go and patent that. Any CS student after a good algorithms course could do this. Then there are all the patents that are cordic, fft, dct, numerical approximations, linear algebra, etc, textbook stuff.
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Dark ages, here we come again.. (Score:2)
shit, I think I have to puke now.
The Courts (Score:4, Insightful)
People need to understand that in most western countries, the judiciary is a kind of priesthood utterly divorced from reality or common sense. What matters to lawyers and judges are not concepts like "justice", "equity" or "reason". What matters to them is the written rule of the law, and how it is best spun into ways that benefit both the priesthood and its patrons--the wealthy and powerful. The courts have no interest in the effects of their judgements. They have interest only in which lawyers arguments were more pleasing in the eyes of legal dogma.
This is a very, very serious problem which has only gotten worse in recent decades. The fact that most politicians are drawn from this clique has only accelerated the utter divorce of the courts from reality. Decisions like these are symptomatic of a judicial system that has broken down at a basic level. There are more across the legal spectrum: lenient corporate fines, excessive tort compensation, stringent libel fines, patents in general, children being convicted of child sex abuse, the rollback of habeas corpus, excess cost of legal defence, battery, etc, etc. The court system is entirely broken.
We live in an age of the misrule of law. If things get any worse, we'll be better off with no legal system at all.
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What I think many people miss is that legalese is a programming language. It is the way we structure society (which is a sort of massively parallel machine). In any program that receives tweaks from time to time, there comes a point where a complete rewrite is not only helpful, but necessary. We have reached that point in western countries. Long overdue in my opinion. Will it be easy? Hell no! But the alternative is to just watch things get even worse. Could things get worse? Certainly, but at least then we
Re:The Courts (Score:4, Interesting)
People need to understand that in most western countries, the judiciary is a kind of priesthood utterly divorced from reality or common sense.
Having read quite a few court cases in my years on slashdot, I would say they tend to be by far the most reasoned voices I've heard from any of the three branches of power. Very often you just get flaming insults with zero reading of the actual verdict.
To take one example, I read a US Appeals court decision that upheld EULAs. I'm sure you can imagine the flame fest, they were retards who shouldn't have made it out of grade school. I read the verdict, and basically their main focus was if the same happened elsewhere, for example like buying a plane ticket over the phone - tons of terms and conditions apply but they're not all read over the phone. They listed many examples but I didn't memorize them, but they found that this was accepted practice many places, the customer had not been mislead, the terms were not unusual for the software and even the name said something like personal edition, the refund possibility was explicitly made clear and basically he just wanted to get out of the contract because if the "personal use" restriction of the EULA didn't apply he could make lots of money. Even I that am against EULAs had to agree he looked like a dirtbag and so the court said you walked into this with open eyes and we're not going to spring you.
By the way, the "terms were not unusual" part was also the cause for another flame fest, the slashdot spin was like "if you expect to get screwed, it's okay to be screwed?!". Uh, yes in pretty much every case the court will look at what people normally get. If it's customary to sell a car with wheels then you'd better put it in the contract if there are no wheels, even though people would still call it a car without them. On the other hand if you still had some belongings in the glove compartment they'd naturally not be there. This is just common sense, and yet it became another reason to bash the courts.
Another good example is the Grokster case. Basically the Appeals court granted summary motion like "No way you can be held guilty of anything". The Supreme court stepped in and said "Eh, if they can prove the defendants sold it like a tool to break the law and encouraged people to break the law, they might" and reversed it for regular trial. As a legal principle it made perfect sense, even if a gun is legal you can't go around selling it like a great murder weapon targeting people in bad divorces making overt suggestions. The question was if Grokster was guilty of anything like that but nothing was ever proven or sentenced because they folded and that was the end of it, but of course the courts got the blame. Even though the opposite would have been complete and utter nonsense.
Your average court is usually fucked two ways, the laws as written and that they have to listen to every absurd legal theory a lawyer can come up with, giving them every possibility to have their day in court - see SCO. Just to take one of your examples, children convicted of child sex abuse, it's a problem that is entirely in law and should be fixed in law. How is it a judiciary problem that Congress didn't exclude self-molestation (lol at the term) from the law? What kind of legal basis would you like them to use, when there's not an ounce of unclarity in the law? You want them to just say "We don't like the rules, so we're changing them"? And in pretty much any story we get one person who think vigilantism from the jury bench should rewrite the law, because that won't lead to injustice because people hate the victim or love the perpetrator.
By far some of the worst are those that would like the courts to invent some new standards of legal certainty or otherwise make it such an impossible process that people can't ever get convicted, as long as it works in favor of the side slashdot is cheering for. Most usually that involves petty copyright infringers who are never guilty even when they're caught
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And so, the day the law and legislators say that you are undesirable and must be taken away and gassed, I hope it will comfort you to know that the Judges and Lawyers did their duty and adhered so properly to the written word of the law.
Bad Precedence - Design Patterns In Trouble (Score:3, Interesting)
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Even though TFA states "all software ideas are now potentially patentable as long as they are innovative from a purely formal point of view, meaning they're at least marginally different from how a technical problem was solved before", many standard design patterns used could be in trouble. For example implementing the well-known Observer pattern [wikipedia.org] using non-OO language constructs, in say Ada83, could be a patentable thing. I mean, this is really bad precedence here and something every software engineer, hell, every company should care about.
Design patents are entirely different - they're on the non-functional aesthetic design of something, like a toy skunk [google.com] or underwear [google.com].
that's it. welcome back to the dark age (Score:3, Interesting)
seriously, we're going all the way downhill back to the dark age.
it's censorship in australia, holding prisoners without charges in US and england, now with software patents, we'll see the resurgence of guilds.
it'll be such a fucked up environment, that only those who are members of a certain guild will be able to make any products in certain field, and if a new entrepeneur tries to enter the market, the established guild will throw all the wheight of the legal system on the new guy.
soon, access to information will be so restricted, that unless you're born in a certain class, you won't have any change of progress or innovating or "changing the world".
when is the first ship to mars leaving ? i'm starting to think that a cold, desert planet with no breathable atmosphere is not such a bad idea after all.
Dear Germany... (Score:2)
Welcome to the fun....
FAT patent rejection was not on software... (Score:2)
"Long gone are the times when Europe was that bastion of resistance against software patents and patents on such things as file systems were ruled invalid.
The rejection of the FAT patent was not because it was a software method, it was because it lacked an "inventive step". That's Europe's term for obviousness. Thus, it was ruled invalid as being obvious, not because it was not patentable subject matter.
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Do you have a copy of the FAT jugement in Germany?
Bugger (Score:2)
So... (Score:2)
This means we need to block all dynamic content sites from loading in Germany (and from hosting such content in Germany as well)? I can handle that. (:
Re:Is it possible (Score:5, Insightful)
Just you wait...
A recipe is just another form of algorithm.
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If drug manufacturers can patent the process to make a new drug, why can't a food manufacturer patent the process used to make food?
Not that a recipe would qualify, but I'm sure they can come up with something significant, like a new baking process to reduce fat.
Of course, I'm only an expert on food consumption, not manufacturing ... so maybe this is already being done. It wouldn't surprise me in the least.
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To patent a Wiener Schnitzel?
You should ask the German patent attorneys, because they're the only ones who are going to benefit from this. I think I'm going to load this data into the Google Predictionometer [slashdot.org] and see if there's gonna be a showdown between Germany and the EU over this matter.
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I think I'm going to load this data into the Google Predictionometer [slashdot.org] and see if there's gonna be a showdown between Germany and the EU over this matter.
Highly unlikely... Contrary to what many Slashdot people will say, the EU does not ban software patents - their law is the same as US law, and now the same as German law, in that software per se is unpatentable, but software tied to a computing device is patentable. The distinction lies in that the former can be done by a person with a pad and pencil or even in their head, and we don't want to make it possible to infringe a patent by thinking, while the latter requires a machine and thus, it's impossible fo
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It probably is, however, it might already be patented in Austria since that's where the Wiener Schnitzel was invented. Also the Wiener sausage.
Wien is the capital of Austria. It's called Vienna in English.
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It is most definitely not patented - any patent would have expired a long time ago.
You are confusing patents with geographical trademarks - rules such as "only sparkling wine from the champagne region can be called 'Champagne' ". Also, the concept of geographical trademarks is only is accepted in the EU but not in North America. Here you can call your sparkling wine "Champagne", independent of where it comes from. And you can definitely call your breaded pork or veal steak a Wiener Schnitzel.
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Not quite, but almost. From the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] about it:
"In Austria, the term Wiener Schnitzel is protected by law, and any schnitzel called by that name has to be made from veal."
While not a patent per se, there are certain things called by a certain region or town that either have to be made in this town or by some specific process. You cannot really get any Champagne in Europe that wasn't made in the region of Champagne. But this is essentially more due to the PDO [wikipedia.org] regulation rather than a patent itsel
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When has prior art stopped a patent office before? I might expect the Germans to be
a little more sensible about things but they already ran off the rails here already.
They're already in WTF territory...
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Ehm... http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/15/0111220/Amiga-Demonstration-Helps-Win-Against-Patent-Troll?from=rss [slashdot.org]
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Hell, I thought it was a dog! Wiener dog, wienerschnitzel, dachshound - a dog is a dog is a dog, right? And, a dog by any other name would still sniff assholes.
Re:Does it make a difference (Score:4, Insightful)
So that means if I sell software, without any hardware with it, then I'm not infringing on _any_ software patents, right?
The users might be, if they run said software on "a hardware appliance, comprising of a CPU, blahblah", but not the developer.
But then, why do pure software developers get sued, huh?
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I realize what I said was stupid.
That was the point.
Maybe I should have included sarcasm tags.
The parent poster of my reply basically stated that all "software patents" include language stating that it includes "a hardware appliance".
If this was true, then no pure software developer could be sued for violating the patent, because what they sell does not include "a hardware device."
It's only the end user that could be sued, because they're running it on their computer hardware.
Obviously, this is not even rem
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So basically what you're saying is, if somebody patents the automobile, then nobody can sell wheels?
Sorry...that's bullshit, too.
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You realize that even if the patent system makes no distinction between software and hardware patents, it still makes sense to yell about software patents, because giving patents on software is fucking stupid?
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on snap!
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Software is purely composed of schemes and rules. I'm sorry, but every comment you've made in this thread implies that you don't understand the mathematical underpinnings of software. Software is mathematics. Period. Full stop. U.S. patents on math and "abstract concepts" are specifically forbidden. A programming language is formal symbolic language in which mathematical theorems are written, which just happen
Re:Does it make a difference (Score:4, Funny)
You
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press
return
after
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on
the
Internet.
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Adding software to a patented hardware device need not mean the software itself becomes patented. Similarly, adding software to an unpatented hardware device need not mean the combo is patentable. If software patents were clearly invalid, any judge worth his or her salt would refuse to grant a patent in either case.
Down the rabbit hole (Score:3, Insightful)
by that logic, I could get a patent for my novel by describing its contents and adding "a hardware appliance consisting of a bound book with paper pages printed on with ink". Then I could sue anyone who made a book using the themes of my patented invention. Wow, I'm gonna get rich! I sure hope nobody else has patented this idea already! (Note to self: remember to file a parallel patent describing how my book would be displayed on a eReader)
As cbiltcliffe points out above, software patents are presented
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It must be very satisfying to make these loud statements of fact, but unfortunately it doesn't affect the ability of patent holders to sue you. If you want to do something about that, make patent reform an issue that affects who you vote for. You do vote, right?
You can't patent your novel because the book was invented millennia ago, and has existed in its current form for a very long time--much longer than the term of any modern patent. You could conceivably have patented the interactive novel under t
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Talk about missing the point. Firstly, if patents are supposed to encourage innovation, why introduce them into the software market where innovation is happening at a breakneck pace? Do you really think the legal process you just described will hasten the pace of software development?
Secondly, the economics of software and physical innovations are multiple orders of magnitude different. Suffice it to say that when you can design, construct and ship near infinite units of a physical good that cost you a tota
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That, sir, is what we call a loophole in the interpretation of the law and it must be closed by changing patent law. Why is math any more patentable when you claim to execute it on a physical computing device than when you present it academically (i.e., executed on a human computing device)? The latter is legally non-patentable, so the former should be as well. This is the philosophical argument against software patents.
The only "process" involved in a software patent is the act of executing non-patenta
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"The stupidity of the US patent system has now spread like the virus it is here."
First, they bought the US government, and no one else spoke out because they were not USians.
Now, they bought the government of America's most powerful satellite, and no one there will speak out (/. doesn't count) because
to admit being a US corporate poodle would be uncomfortable.
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