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Is The UK Patent Office Ignoring Court Ruling On Software Patents?
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| Back in October, we were disappointed by a UK court ruling that effectively
| told the UK's Patent Office that it had to stop rejecting software patents
| outright, and instead consider software patentable if it met certain
| criteria. Given the widespread evidence that software patents have done
| plenty of harm, and almost nothing to help the software industry, this is
| generally disappointing. However, it looks like the UK patent office may be
| trying to do its best to ignore the implications of the court ruling.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20081217/0308033150.shtml
Recent:
Symbian wins software-patent ruling
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| "Unlike copyright, patents can block independent creations," said
| ORG. "Software patents can render software copyright useless. One copyrighted
| work can be covered by hundreds of patents of which the author doesn't even
| know but for whose infringement he and his users can be sued."
|
| Companies that are in favour of software patents include Microsoft, which
| encourages companies to licence software from patent owners.
`----
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39514587,00.htm
Why European software patents are legally invalid
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| Which invites the question: if the drafters intended the exclusion to be
| meaningless, why did they bother adding it? Of course, the EPO's
| interpretation isn't at all what was intended.
|
| A second obvious problem with the EPO's interpretation is that it doesn't
| just render meaningless the exclusion of computer programs. It renders all
| the exclusions meaningless, so games, doing business, scientific
| theories, "rules and methods for performing mental acts" (yes, ways of using
| your brain), and all the other things listed in Paragraph 2 of Article 52
| should be patentable. Which is completely absurd.
|
| Unfortunately, a UK appeal court has recently upheld this bizarre twisting of
| patents - and that article mis-reports the patent dangers as "protection" for
| software developers.
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http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/why_european_software_patents_are_legally_invalid
Nokia seeks India patent for multimedia sharing technology
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| New Delhi, Oct 12: World's largest mobile phone maker Nokia has filed a
| patent application in India for its networking solution which allows a user
| group to share multimedia contents during a group communication.
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http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=475627&sid=BUS&ssid=54
Patenting strategies and the value of European patents
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| No matter what the degree of adequacy or inadequacy of the system to today’s
| technology markets, a situation that is based on deliberate abuse of the law
| cannot be desirable. Therefore, either the law as it is should be more
| strictly enforced, or it should be adapted to better fulfil its economic
| purpose.
`----
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2365
Symbian's Patently Terrible “Triumph”
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| Although I've written elsewhere about the recent court case of Symbian v
| Comptroller General of Patents, noting that it was bad news, I hadn't
| realised quite how bad the news was until I went through the complete
| judgment.
|
| It's plain that the judges in question, who to their credit tried their level
| best to understand this mysterious stuff called software, failed to grasp the
| central issue of what software is. As a result, they have passed down a
| judgement that is so seriously wrong it will cause a huge amount of damage in
| the future unless it is revoked by a higher court.
|
| [...]
|
| Basically, the UK patent office appealed against an earlier appeal against
| its own refusal to grant a patent to Symbian for a programming technique.
| Yes, you read that correctly: the Patent Office was trying to get an appeal
| against its refusal to grant a patent struck down, because it didn't believe
| that the original patent application should be allowed. Through its own
| appeal, the UK Patent Office was trying to establish what could and could not
| be patented in the world of code.
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http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/green-computing/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1395&blogid=14
Bad News on the UK Software Patent Front
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| Well, no more unfair than not allowing physicists to patent the laws they
| discover, or the theorems that mathematicians prove. The point is, software
| is not "closer to a mathematical method", it is a mathematical method, or
| rather a concatenation of them.
|
| All this juridical "on the one hand" and "on the other" in the interests
| of "balance" does not change this. The current decision is seriously bad
| news, because it opens the door to even more weaselly patent applications
| that contort themselves into the magic position to gain the favour of
| whichever Jesuit is on duty that day.
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http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/10/bad-news-on-uk-software-patent-front.html
Court ruling strengthens patent protection for UK software
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| Technology companies will find it easier to safeguard their innovations in
| the UK after a court ruled that software should receive wider patent
| protection.
|
| The Court of Appeal said today that complex software such as programmes
| designed to make mobile phones and computers work faster can be patented in
| the UK.
|
| Previously, manufacturers could claim commercial exclusivity for their
| products under copyright laws but had less legal protection for underlying
| technical processes.
|
| As a result of the ruling, developers are likely to find it easier to secure
| approval from the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO), which has
| traditionally been reluctant to grant patents to cover software.
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http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article4907993.ece
Latest Decision on UK Software Patents Rejects UK-IPO Interpretation
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| Today’s Court of Appeal decision on the Symbian case has affirmed that the UK
| and European approaches to software patentability are fundamentally
| compatible. This upholds a High Court decision which had overturned the
| rejection by the UK-IPO of an application to patent “Mapping dynamic link
| libraries in a computing device”.
`----
http://www.marks-clerk.com/attorneys/news_one.aspx?newsid=220
Court of Appeal delivers a software patent boost in the UK
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| Companies looking to obtain and enforce software patents in the UK received a
| boost today when the Court of Appeal ruled against the UK IP Office in its
| appeal against a decision of the High Court in the Symbian case. The High
| Court had overturned a UKIPO decision not to grant a patent to Symbian for an
| accelerator relating to iPods, mobile phones and computers.
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http://www.iam-magazine.com/blog/Detail.aspx?g=74ecc083-2eae-4b75-a64c-499c9e873f65
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