Differences between version 14 and predecessor to the previous major change of SoftwarePatent.
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| Newer page: | version 14 | Last edited on Monday, April 4, 2005 9:05:52 pm | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
| Older page: | version 10 | Last edited on Friday, November 19, 2004 9:08:19 am | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
A [Patent] that covers a software "invention".
+
__Patents on software are just as wrong as expanding the patent system to literature.__ With patents on story elements, no movie could be published without having to firstly check whether there is any general idea in the storyline that someone patented during the last 20 years. Here's an example: At first sight, Dirty Dancing and Titanic are two very distinct movies. However, if there were patents on story elements, then the makers of Dirty Dancing could have sued the studio of Titanic. Both movies have a scene in which a poor boy takes a rich girl from a party of her social peers to a dancing party of his group, and she enjoys it. Dirty Dancing came out only nine years before Titanic, so any patent would still have been in force. No one knows whether James Cameron had that Dirty Dancing scene in mind as he wrote the Titanic script. Maybe Cameron never saw Dirty Dancing but the patent (if it existed) could be used against him anyway.
<br> --from "[Thoughts Are Free! | http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/basics/thoughts.html]"
@@ -8,26 +9,26 @@
* [FFII: Software Patents in Europe | http://swpat.ffii.org/]
* [Association Electronique Libre | http://wiki.ael.be/] [FightingSWPatents | http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/FightingSWPatents]
* [No Software Patents! | http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/] (a very clean, neatly organized site well worth reading)
* [Petition for a Software Patent Free Europe | http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html?LANG=en]
+* [Quotations on Software Patents|http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/quotes/index.en.html]
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!!! Software Patents and New Zealand
!! Current Situation - The Law
The NewZealand Ministry of Economic Development has an online "info-sheet" with a summary about [Patent Protection|http://www.med.govt.nz/buslt/int_prop/info-sheets/patent-prot.html].
-The following extract seems highly relevant to this discussion:<br>
-__(begin quote)
__<br>
+The following extract seems highly relevant to this discussion::
+
+
<br>
+
__In New Zealand the two main criteria for the granting of a patent are:
__
-In
New Zealand the two main criteria for
the granting
of a patent are:
+ * __It is new:__
+ An invention is considered to be new if a description of the invention has not been published in
New Zealand before
the filing date of
the application. No notice is taken
of information published outside New Zealand but not publicly available within New Zealand.
-It is new:
-
An invention is considered to be new if a description of the invention has not been published in New Zealand before the filing date of the application. No notice is taken of information published outside New Zealand but not publicly available within New Zealand.
-
-
This has been interpreted by the Courts to exclude such things as "products of nature", mathematical operations, bare principles, mathematical algorithms, schemes or plans and methods of medical treatment of humans.
-<br>
-__(end quote)__<br>
+ * __
It is a "manner of new manufacture":__
+
This has been interpreted by the Courts to exclude such things as "products of nature", mathematical operations, bare principles, mathematical algorithms, schemes or plans and methods of medical treatment of humans.
On the face of it (to a layman), that seems to disallow the granting of patents for an "invention" implemented solely in software.
You can search the patent database at the [Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand | http://www.iponz.govt.nz/] (cookies required).
@@ -73,7 +74,8 @@
* BusinessMethodPatent
* IntellectualProperty
* LinuxWiki:Patent
* OpenDirectory's [Patents category | http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Intellectual_Property/Patents/]
+* Scraped [RSS] feeds for [USPTO patents and patent applications by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo | http://varchars.com/rss/]
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Part of CategoryLegalese
