Re: The political decision about non-free
On Monday 08 Mar 2004 19:22, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote:
> The European Patent Office has accepted software patents for some time
> now. Perhaps they would fail a court case, but, as somebody said, do
> you want us to be the test case?
What europe has is quite different to the american system. There are no
software patents as such, but sufficently complex inventions (including the
algorithms used for mp3 as a specific example) are patentable just like any
other invention. It basically means its very hard to flood the system with
trivial patents like amazon and such do in the US, but genuine inventions are
still protected under patent law. The bar for what is considered an invention
is much, much higher essentially, and it prevents the patenting of 'business
processes'.
Tom
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