Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - The EU and Software Patents

jonjon42 · 01-26-2005, 04:37 PM

catback..I think you are thinking of copyright...we are talking patents...
patents are for the idea...example...left clicking..example one click shopping...example Mcafee just recieved a patent for tracking network events on a computer using a firewall. now the problem with this is alot of what they described has been done before...just not patented. It's not innovation it's just making patents of things that have been around and nobody thought about before...and then trying to enforce...software patents stifle innovation which is the opposite of what they were supposed to do. The fact that alot if not most of these patents have some kind of prior art and yet still get granted does not help.(it's hard to fight off a patent lawsuit..especially if you are a FOSS developer)

Now if you are a programmer you don't want to know anything about patents because if you "willfully" broke patent law the punishment is helluva lot worse then if you don't know about it...and some of the things patented by different corperations are kinda necessary...

01-26-2005, 04:37 PM	#4 (permalink)
jonjon42 Psycho Location: inside my own mind	catback..I think you are thinking of copyright...we are talking patents... patents are for the idea...example...left clicking..example one click shopping...example Mcafee just recieved a patent for tracking network events on a computer using a firewall. now the problem with this is alot of what they described has been done before...just not patented. It's not innovation it's just making patents of things that have been around and nobody thought about before...and then trying to enforce...software patents stifle innovation which is the opposite of what they were supposed to do. The fact that alot if not most of these patents have some kind of prior art and yet still get granted does not help.(it's hard to fight off a patent lawsuit..especially if you are a FOSS developer) Now if you are a programmer you don't want to know anything about patents because if you "willfully" broke patent law the punishment is helluva lot worse then if you don't know about it...and some of the things patented by different corperations are kinda necessary... __________________ A damn dirty hippie without the dirty part.... Last edited by jonjon42; 01-26-2005 at 04:40 PM..