Re: Open Invention Network
On 28/02/2012 10:15, Steffen Möller wrote:
Hello,
Hello
On 02/27/2012 05:58 PM, Alan R Williams wrote:
We (the myGrid team at Manchester) have had an e-mail from the Open
Invention Network - http://www.openinventionnetwork.com .
I'm seeking other people's opinion about if the patent portfolio
initiative is a good thing and whether it is necessary.
Debian has just issued its stance on patents
http://www.debian.org/legal/patent
There I found a pointer to http://www.softwarefreedom.org/ who may be a
good address to ask about the OIN and the effect it or patents in
general may have on your development.
Thanks Steffen. Those will be very useful.
The core of Debian is indeed creative in its package management and the
associated infrastructure. The outer parts like Debian Med I see less
effected who we mostly package what others have invented. What may be
good though are all the time stamps that come with a package, so
discussions about prior art may be helped now and then.
That is true. Although obvious prior art doesn't seem to stop ome of the
current patent claims!
When the Taverna<->Debian interplay progresses beyond our current
prototype state and we happen to create creative solutions for problems
in computational biology by some novel interplay of tools, then this is
not patentable in Germany. It may be an issue for the US, though. Are
there indisputable time stamps with workflows submitted to myExperiment?
They are timestamped with when the workflow is uploaded. Also, in
Taverna there is a timestamp for the annotations that associate a unique
ID with each save of the workflow. I have used them in the past to spot
people who have tried to claim workflows that were not their own.
In the past we have discussed with Dave de Roure (of myExperiment) as to
how ids and timestamps may be better used. Perhaps this is something
that the wf4ever project should look at.
I have not come across anyone wanting to patent a workflow, though I
guess it should be possible.
So, at the moment I do not care too much, but, well, maybe I should.
Tell me :o)
It is one of those things (like license agreements and copyright) that I
should care about but give up after the first paragraph :-)
Steffen
Alan
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