[Gllug] Fwd: [opensuse] Invitation to OpenSUSE developers

[Philip Hands]

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Jason Clifford wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Nov 2006, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> 
>> There is a large list of patents covering MP3 which have been granted
>> by the European Patent office and thus apply in the UK, even if the 
>> UK patent office itself wouldn't typically grant them. I must admit
>> though I'm a little fuzzy on how tenable these patants are given that
>> the general concept of software patents was explicitly rejected in
>> the EU last year.
> 
> That the patents office has accepted and granted a patent does not mean it 
> is enforcable. EU law specifically rejects software patents and they are 
> not covered under the CPDA.

The only fly in the ointment being that there's at least one case[1] where,
as I understand it, a judge was persuaded by clever patent lawyers that a
general-purpose computer, when running a program, metamorphoses into a
unique machine that is a gestalt of the computer and the program, and that
while the program itself is not patentable, this (I'd say fictitious)
machine _is_ patentable.  *sigh*

Cheers, Phil.

[1].Kock and Sterzel1 X-ray apparatus.
  See David Harris' briefing paper for more details:
  http://hands.com/~phil/swpat/technical_effect_briefing.sxw
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