6 ms·

Software patents aren't a thing in Europe a few European countries. Sure it's difficult to ignore the American market for a company, but an independent deve

Software patents aren't a thing in ~~Europe~~ a few European countries. Sure it's difficult to ignore the American market for a company, but an independent developer could specify a state of the art video codec without thinking about patents. Edited because I didn't know that some European countries accept software patents.

p_l 6y ago
Software patents are a very complex thing. For example, many countries in EU do not allow patents on software, but that's not something you can claim to be true for all of them - at least before Brexit, since iirc UK was pretty happy to provide software patents. Then there's a case where if you're really willing you can, as far as I understand, force a patent dispute through WTO, with possibility of patent valid in USA being executed for example in Poland, despite the fact that the patent is invalid in Poland (it doesn't matter if your software is part of physical solution in Poland, algorithms of any kind are not patentable).
- speedgoose 6y ago
  One more benefit of the brexit for mainland Europe! I didn't know about using the WTO to dispute invalide patents. I guess a WTO dispute can make sense for a Boeing software patent used by Airbus. I wonder whether the WTO would care about an independent developer. It's not very good press, but perhaps it's fine for them.
  - p_l 6y ago
    WTO doesn't care, WTO serves as a forum to get it through. The question is, does a "practicing entity" holding the patent cares enough to go through the hardest route to get the patent executed using WTO as a forum? One needs to compare costs and benefits. It's why patent trolling involved pretty much few counties in Texas, because that's where the costs were lowest compared to benefits.
  - makomk 6y ago
    It's not just the UK that allows software patents in practice - as the discussion hints at, Germany does too, and if I remember rightly pretty much the last patent affecting MP3 was a German patent on zero-padding held by Philips, who enforced it aggressively against manufacturers of devices like music players.
- rwmj 6y ago
  What really annoys me is that Article 52 of the EPC explicitly excludes software from patentability. It couldn't be more clear in its language (to me). But when I talked to a patent lawyer about this a while back he said didn't really mean that and software could and is easily patented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_European_Patent_Convention#Article_52_of_the_European_Patent_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Eur...
josaka 6y ago
I think Europe does allow software patents of a sort: See https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/guidelines/e/j.htm https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/guidelines... Or you might have a particular definition of the term in mind that excludes these, but I think when most folks here the term, they'd include what the EPO permits.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  The European patent office is not an official thing. It's an independent private organization that will gladly take your money to submit patents.
  - AdrianB1 6y ago
    The European Patent Organisation is an intergovernmental organisation (https://www.epo.org/about-us/foundation.html https://www.epo.org/about-us/foundation.html). Not a private organization.
    - speedgoose 6y ago
      Alright, I was wrong. Still strange that they issue patents that are obviously invalid.
      - vertex-four 6y ago
        The reasoning is that individual states have Opinions about the validity of software patents and they're going to keep issuing them until somebody with the proper authority clarifies that the law means what the law says, although as far as I can tell none have actually been successfully enforced.
      - AdrianB1 6y ago
        I know quite well a patent examiner there; there is a lot of politics and incompetence in appointing people and a lot of pressure to accept most of the patents they receive, if I understood correctly part of the reason is politics (if you refuse, even stupid patents, influential people will get upset) and part is the idea to have as many patents as possible as a measure of European creativity and innovation and ... bla-bla. Universities and research institutes are measured by the number of patents and if they don't invent something good, they will patent something stupid just to get the numbers right.
jcranmer 6y ago
> Software patents aren't a thing in ~~Europe~~ a few European countries. Look at all those European patents in the MPEG-LA license pool! https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/avc-att1.pdf https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/avc-att1.pdf
- vertex-four 6y ago
  Software patents can exist, but are almost always unenforceable, is my understanding of it from researching this for my own media-related project.
  - Ace17 6y ago
    > Software patents can exist, but are almost always unenforceable Wanna take the risk? You might end-up winning the lawsuit, but at this moment, there's a good chance for you to be already out-of-business.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      As I understand it there has been no successful enforcement of a software patent so far, and it's ridiculously unlikely that I (as opposed to any other actor in this space) will be the first case. So yeah, I'll take that risk.
      - Ace17 6y ago
        I would love that you be right. However, here are examples of successfully enforced software patents: - in Europe: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2002/1702.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2002/1702.html - in US: https://web.archive.org/web/20061205050434/http://eolas.com/zmapress.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20061205050434/http://eolas.com/... But as I said, if your startup is being sued by Dolby, whether the enforcement is successful or not is actually irrelevant. Showing that your work doesn't infringe a patent, or that Dolby's patent is invalid, is a money and time-consuming process (unsurprisingly, patents are not generally written to facilitate re-implementation or defense). (Moreover, in the US, in some cases, the patent owner might even get a preliminary injunction ( https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/matters/matters-9712.html https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/matters/matters-9712.h... ), which might seriously and immediately harm your business. I don't know if such a thing exists in Europe). Big tech companies like Dolby and IBM use a preventive racket-looking technique ; it involves trying to sell to potential infringers a "protective" subscription, but there's no preliminary analysis of whether there actually is any patent being infringed. During broadcasting tech events like IBC or NAB, Dolby actually sends people to other company's booths for this ; and there's a famous story about IBM against small-at-this-time SUN : https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html , whose gist is: > "OK," [the IBM lawyer] said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. > Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? > Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"
Ace17 6y ago
In practice, EU does allow software patents. The software invention just needs to be disguised as a machine. Industrial property lawyers know very well how to do that, and it's unfortunately very common. > Edited because I didn't know that some European countries accept software patents. European patents are granted at the European Patent Office (individual european countries also have their own patent offices, whose patents can only be enforced in their home country).
- p_l 6y ago
  enforceability of EPO patents varies, that's why there was a big fight on software patents in EU parliament not so long ago, not sure however on current status - that needs to be checked I guess.

Software patents aren't a thing in ~~Europe~~ a few European countries. Sure it's difficult to ignore the American market for a company, but an independent deve

p_l 6y ago

Software patents are a very complex thing. For example, many countries in EU do not allow patents on software, but that's not something you can claim to be true for all of them - at least before Brexit, since iirc UK was pretty happy to provide software patents. Then there's a case where if you're really willing you can, as far as I understand, force a patent dispute through WTO, with possibility of patent valid in USA being executed for example in Poland, despite the fact that the patent is invalid in Poland (it doesn't matter if your software is part of physical solution in Poland, algorithms of any kind are not patentable).

speedgoose 6y ago
One more benefit of the brexit for mainland Europe! I didn't know about using the WTO to dispute invalide patents. I guess a WTO dispute can make sense for a Boeing software patent used by Airbus. I wonder whether the WTO would care about an independent developer. It's not very good press, but perhaps it's fine for them.
- p_l 6y ago
  WTO doesn't care, WTO serves as a forum to get it through. The question is, does a "practicing entity" holding the patent cares enough to go through the hardest route to get the patent executed using WTO as a forum? One needs to compare costs and benefits. It's why patent trolling involved pretty much few counties in Texas, because that's where the costs were lowest compared to benefits.
- makomk 6y ago
  It's not just the UK that allows software patents in practice - as the discussion hints at, Germany does too, and if I remember rightly pretty much the last patent affecting MP3 was a German patent on zero-padding held by Philips, who enforced it aggressively against manufacturers of devices like music players.
rwmj 6y ago
What really annoys me is that Article 52 of the EPC explicitly excludes software from patentability. It couldn't be more clear in its language (to me). But when I talked to a patent lawyer about this a while back he said didn't really mean that and software could and is easily patented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_European_Patent_Convention#Article_52_of_the_European_Patent_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Eur...

josaka 6y ago

I think Europe does allow software patents of a sort: See https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/guidelines/e/j.htm https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/guidelines... Or you might have a particular definition of the term in mind that excludes these, but I think when most folks here the term, they'd include what the EPO permits.

speedgoose 6y ago
The European patent office is not an official thing. It's an independent private organization that will gladly take your money to submit patents.
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  The European Patent Organisation is an intergovernmental organisation (https://www.epo.org/about-us/foundation.html https://www.epo.org/about-us/foundation.html). Not a private organization.
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    Alright, I was wrong. Still strange that they issue patents that are obviously invalid.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      The reasoning is that individual states have Opinions about the validity of software patents and they're going to keep issuing them until somebody with the proper authority clarifies that the law means what the law says, although as far as I can tell none have actually been successfully enforced.
    - AdrianB1 6y ago
      I know quite well a patent examiner there; there is a lot of politics and incompetence in appointing people and a lot of pressure to accept most of the patents they receive, if I understood correctly part of the reason is politics (if you refuse, even stupid patents, influential people will get upset) and part is the idea to have as many patents as possible as a measure of European creativity and innovation and ... bla-bla. Universities and research institutes are measured by the number of patents and if they don't invent something good, they will patent something stupid just to get the numbers right.

jcranmer 6y ago

> Software patents aren't a thing in ~~Europe~~ a few European countries. Look at all those European patents in the MPEG-LA license pool! https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/avc-att1.pdf https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/avc-att1.pdf

vertex-four 6y ago
Software patents can exist, but are almost always unenforceable, is my understanding of it from researching this for my own media-related project.
- Ace17 6y ago
  > Software patents can exist, but are almost always unenforceable Wanna take the risk? You might end-up winning the lawsuit, but at this moment, there's a good chance for you to be already out-of-business.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    As I understand it there has been no successful enforcement of a software patent so far, and it's ridiculously unlikely that I (as opposed to any other actor in this space) will be the first case. So yeah, I'll take that risk.
    - Ace17 6y ago
      I would love that you be right. However, here are examples of successfully enforced software patents: - in Europe: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2002/1702.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2002/1702.html - in US: https://web.archive.org/web/20061205050434/http://eolas.com/zmapress.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20061205050434/http://eolas.com/... But as I said, if your startup is being sued by Dolby, whether the enforcement is successful or not is actually irrelevant. Showing that your work doesn't infringe a patent, or that Dolby's patent is invalid, is a money and time-consuming process (unsurprisingly, patents are not generally written to facilitate re-implementation or defense). (Moreover, in the US, in some cases, the patent owner might even get a preliminary injunction ( https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/matters/matters-9712.html https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/matters/matters-9712.h... ), which might seriously and immediately harm your business. I don't know if such a thing exists in Europe). Big tech companies like Dolby and IBM use a preventive racket-looking technique ; it involves trying to sell to potential infringers a "protective" subscription, but there's no preliminary analysis of whether there actually is any patent being infringed. During broadcasting tech events like IBC or NAB, Dolby actually sends people to other company's booths for this ; and there's a famous story about IBM against small-at-this-time SUN : https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html , whose gist is: > "OK," [the IBM lawyer] said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. > Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? > Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"

Ace17 6y ago

In practice, EU does allow software patents. The software invention just needs to be disguised as a machine. Industrial property lawyers know very well how to do that, and it's unfortunately very common. > Edited because I didn't know that some European countries accept software patents. European patents are granted at the European Patent Office (individual european countries also have their own patent offices, whose patents can only be enforced in their home country).

p_l 6y ago
enforceability of EPO patents varies, that's why there was a big fight on software patents in EU parliament not so long ago, not sure however on current status - that needs to be checked I guess.