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No software patents in europe ?

Cyberman

Moderator
Moderator
The problem is can we continue in the US. Adobe has 25 patents on adobe acrobat. The US has such a nightmare now people feel like the sword of Damnacles is over there head all the time (IE will something fall and split my head open because some twit patented this). WC3 is haveing to change there standards because of software patents (html is being altered so it doesn't use 'patented' 'technology').

Bleah
Cyberman
 

blight

New member
bah..... fuck USA - if HTML is really gonna be changed its not only gonna affect USA, who is the only country in which such stupid patents are legal, but the whole world... tornados will become bigger and bigger until the US politicians are sucked off from our earth
 

pandamoan

Banned
blight said:
bah..... fuck USA - if HTML is really gonna be changed its not only gonna affect USA, who is the only country in which such stupid patents are legal, but the whole world... tornados will become bigger and bigger until the US politicians are sucked off from our earth

i'm proud of being an american in many ways, but yes, under the current corporate regime(s), i've been considering europe for a while now, or maybe an island somewhere....

jamie
 

smegforbrain

New member
Actually, IE itself may cause some people headaches here very soon.

Microsoft is currently appealing a case they lost where a company claims to have patented plugins first for software.
So, browsers will be forced to change since they targetted MS first and MS lost (so far).

Frankly, it's just a bunch of bullshit litigation that cares nothing of us, the normal user, and only of making money.
But we're going to suffer for it.

That's part of the reason behind the lack of software patents in the EU.

The problem isn't the patents, it's how they are applied.
 

Cyberman

Moderator
Moderator
blight said:
bah..... fuck USA - if HTML is really gonna be changed its not only gonna affect USA, who is the only country in which such stupid patents are legal, but the whole world... tornados will become bigger and bigger until the US politicians are sucked off from our earth

Well I'm glad you informed me of this. I happen to live in the US. Yeah things aren't perfect, but this isn't a political forum it's about programing. So please stick to that topic. Now specifically patenting software is a really sticky problem here because it causes once freely usable software to become 'intellectual' property of someone. It's questionable at best. Let's talk about WHY patenting software causes problems instead of calling the US the worlds source for problems ;)

smegforbrain said:
Actually, IE itself may cause some people headaches here very soon.

Microsoft is currently appealing a case they lost where a company claims to have patented plugins first for software.
So, browsers will be forced to change since they targetted MS first and MS lost (so far).

Frankly, it's just a bunch of bullshit litigation that cares nothing of us, the normal user, and only of making money.
But we're going to suffer for it.

That's part of the reason behind the lack of software patents in the EU.

The problem isn't the patents, it's how they are applied.

Well it's the result of the catch phrase (or should I say contageon) called Intellectual property. It's a catch all used by lawyers. The question is really what is patentable, a lot of hard work goes into something, what can be patented. Software by it's malliable nature and tendancy to have parallel invention is not really good for patenting things such as structures etc. are because they aren't so easily changed.

I'm concerned about this especially since the DMCA problem. I believe a lot of reform is needed and perhaps the government should stop granted patents until it's resolved in the US.

Cyb
 
OP
Hacktarux

Hacktarux

Emulator Developer
Moderator
For me, the most annoying characteristic of the patents is that you don't need to have done the actual work to hold it... You only need enough money to pay for technologies that you think will appear in the next few years.

I prefer the way software are protected in europe. It's considered like a work of art. The law protects the real author against piracy (copying the software as a whole or writing a software that's doing exactly the same thing with the same look on the same OS...) but algorithms can't be protected. It's just like music, the law protect the whole song but not every single sentences in the lyrics.
 

AlphaWolf

I prey, not pray.
blight said:
bah..... fuck USA - if HTML is really gonna be changed its not only gonna affect USA, who is the only country in which such stupid patents are legal, but the whole world... tornados will become bigger and bigger until the US politicians are sucked off from our earth

Well, just because the internet started in the USA doesn't mean everybody else has to follow our rules...what we created was the "inter" net. If you don't like our rules then just don't follow them, as you obviously don't have to. Or, you can just start your own separate noninter net.
 
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smegforbrain

New member
Cyberman said:
The question is really what is patentable, a lot of hard work goes into something, what can be patented.

The problem in this case is that it's an IDEA that is patented, that of plugins (not even necessarily browser-based plugins), yet the company behind it put forth no applicable uses of the patent, which means, imo, that they don't have a right to bitch about it now. :)

If anything, the term "plugin" covers such a broad range of possibilities that, well, it blows.
 

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