Re: Software patents and Debian
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 08:14:04AM +0200, Arnoud Engelfriet wrote:
> Magnus Holmgren wrote:
> > On Sunday 20 August 2006 18:21, Adam Borowski took the opportunity to say:
> > > Reviving non-US and renaming it appropiately would be nice. Of
> > > course, the current non-US server resides in Germany and Germany is
> > > one of the rogue countries...
> >
> > Doesn't German patent law adhere to the EPC?
>
> Of course. The German Supreme Court however has the same
> interpretation of "software as such" as the European Patent Office.
This means that they completely disrespect Article 52 [1]. However, their
intepretation is a minority.
After the last attempt to legislate a "Common Position" failed (July 2005),
there is no EU-wide law that would enforce software patents, although
particular member countries are free to enact such laws. In other words,
interpretation differs on a country-by-country base. Unless I'm missing
something, it's only Germany and the UK who put EPO over the EPC.
Also, there is no such thing as an "European patent". Filing an application
to the EPO is same as filing a separate application in every single member
country[2] -- this saves paperwork but has no legal meaning towards a
patent's validity. In fact, a patent struct down in one country is still
present (and possibly valid) in the rest.
[1]. http://www.european-patent-office.org/legal/epc/e/ar52.html
[2]. Not all EU members signed the EPC, there are outside countries which
signed it.
--
1KB // Microsoft corollary to Hanlon's razor:
// Never attribute to stupidity what can be
// adequately explained by malice.
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