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Re: systemd patent fees - who pays?



+++ Adrien CLERC [2014-03-28 12:17 +0100]:

> No one in Europe. There's no such thing as software patent here. Yet. I
> hope this will stay forever.
> (And yes, maybe I'm wrong, but please enlighten me!)

You are wrong. This is a common misconception, amongst geeks, but there
are thousands of software patents registered in Europe. It is quite a
lot harder to use them agressively than it is in the USA, as we don't
have anything quite a dumb as jury trials in East Marshall, but if you
follow, for example, the samsung/apple lawsuits round the world or case
law on microsoft's FAT patents, you will see some pretty bad stuff has
gone on here too.

Thinking that this problem is null here is very wrongheaded. It's just
significantly less awful than America, which isn't a very high bar to
pass.

This is quite a good historical summary (depite being by an IP lawyer):
http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-mess-that-is-european-software.html

And this is info we free software people will find informative:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Software_patents_exist_in_Europe,_mostly

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM
http://wookware.org/


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