[sclug] sclug Digest, Vol 106, Issue 1

[Neil Haughton]

The trouble is software patent suits are not about common sense and
protecting an inventor's right to prosper from his/her's ideas, they are
about keeping corporate lawyers in the manner to which they have become
accustomed.
I have been looking into the question at work and the legal advice we has
had is that in Europe at least patenting software securely is very
difficult except in very narrow circumstances. Most such patents are
dubious and there to continue the gravy train at the expense of consumers.
And that from a lawyer!
I bet that if patent attorneys had to return their fees whenever a patent
they had contrived was successfully challenged, there would be a lot fewer
of them (both)!

Neil
(from my mobile phone)
On Jul 6, 2012 1:00 PM, <sclug-request at sclug.org.uk> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. slide to unlock (Graham Swallow)
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Graham Swallow <lists at information-cascade.co.uk>
> To: sclug at sclug.org.uk
> Cc:
> Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 14:12:29 +0100
> Subject: [sclug] slide to unlock
> HELP! I am stuck in the garden!
>
> Some guy from patent enforcement came round, welded my garden gate bolt
> shut,
> muttering something about people like me using pirated technology.
> I tried all the gestures I could think of, but that probably made it worse.
>
> I tried arguing that their patent had prior art from
> barn-door-wooden-claves,
> but they claim that residential-use-metal-bolts is a unique specialisation.
>
> Its started to rain. Again.
>
>
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