On Tue, 2012-03-20 at 22:48 +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 11:27:28PM +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote: > > Patent-encumbered codecs are evil and it is time to embrace > > Free codecs. > > Actually, government-granted monopolies are the problem. The codecs > and software run just fine, over here in a free(-er) country. Did you see http://ploum.net/post/working-with-patents ? One thing I found interesting there was this: "Not being a patent expert, I nevertheless knew that software patent were not allowed in Europe. I wondered how I could possibly patent something that was nothing more than a customized Bayes algorithm. It looked trivial and purely software. Also, as a Free Software geek, I was against software patents. Not sure why but I trusted those who were against it. I was asked to reconsider my "invention" under another light: I was using captors to the external world. My prediction had an impact on a hardware product. In fact, every software patent you can think of can be reconsidered as an hardware patent. In the extreme case, isn't moving electron something physical? Also, everything actually running as hardware can become software. Think about modelization. Even a plane or a train can exist only as a software model. It doesn't make sense to make a distinction between software and hardware patent. Some patent attorney are specialized into re-writing a software patent into something that would be accepted by the European patent office. In the end, it is only a difference in the way you describe things, or pure hypocrisy. I was and I'm still convinced. There is no non-arbitrary difference between hardware, software or even pharmaceutical patents." I rather suspect that, as described above, it is in practice entirely possible to patent software in Europe, and the reason there are somewhat fewer such patents and lawsuits than in the U.S. are really just that it's somewhat _harder_ to file patents in the EU and anyone worth suing is certainly doing business in the U.S., so you may as well just do your suing in East Texas. But I don't think you're really as safe sitting in the U.K. as you may think... -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora http://www.happyassassin.net -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
