Halliburton loses software patent appeal in UK
,----[ Quote ]
| England's Court of Appeal has upheld a ruling that two
| software-related patents were invalid. Oil giant Halliburton's
| attempts to patent in the UK a software system for designing drill
| bits has failed.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/18/halliburton_loses_software_patentt_appeal/
Also:
Patent Tribbles.
,----[ Quote ]
| When you patent a bridge girder, or airplane wing, or nifty new saw
| blade design, you describe the invention, and what it does. You get
| the patent on the device, not the result. You can't lock up "holding
| up a bridge," or "providing more lift for an airplane," or "sawing
| with less drag." If someone else can accomplish the same end with
| another device they are free to do so. In software patents,
| however, the "invention" can only be described by the inputs and
| outputs. You are patenting the results of mathematical manipulation
| of numbers. No one else is allowed to achieve the same result set,
| no matter how they go about it. That is exactly what patents are
| NOT supposed to do.
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http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20061215131844340&title=Patent%20Tribbles.&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=518338#c518365
http://tinyurl.com/yynl2k
Related:
Big businesses boast of patent benefits, for small businesses
,----[ Quote ]
| A report published by an EU task force on intellectual property claims
| that small businesses benefit from a patent system, despite lacking
| almost any participation by the small business community.
|
| Instead, the report, titled IPR (intellectual property rights) for
| competitiveness and innovation, was written up almost entirely by
| large corporations and the patent industry.
|
| [...]
|
| The report does note objections from the likes of patentfrei.de and
| Sun Microsystems, which were recorded at some length in the report.
| But this does not appear to have impacted the conclusion of the
| report in any way
|
| [...]
|
| Jean-Pierre Laisne, of ObjectWeb, an open source software community,
| said that he found the report useless: participants were told that
| all their contributions would be recorded but at the end only
| those of Business Software Alliance and Microsoft were used.
`----
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/99155/big-businesses-boast-of-patent-benefits-for-small-businesses.html
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