My Bots Weblog

«Les brevets sont une arme à double-tranchant. Ceux-ci ont permis à Apple de faire condamner Samsung aux Etats-Unis. Mais les brevets, c'est aussi ce qui vaut à la firme de Cupertino une lourde condamnation. Dans un dossier ouvert désormais depuis plusieurs années, Apple a écopé de la part d'un tribunal fédéral du district est du Texas d'une lourde sanction, le 26 septembre dernier. Le géant va devoir verser à VirnetX Holding Corp, en royalties et en réparations, 302,4 millions de dollars. Le tribunal choisi, à l'est du Texas, n'est à cet égard pas étonnant, puisqu'il est connu pour rendre des jugements en faveur des détenteurs de brevets assez facilement.» [...] «VirnetX se présente comme un éditeur de logiciels de sécurité IT mais il s'agit surtout d’un patent troll dont l'activité consiste à exploiter juridiquement son portefeuille de brevets. »...
Source: http://www.zdnet.fr | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«Plusieurs mois après la finalisation des négociations entre Microsoft et le gouvernement chinois concernant le rachat de Nokia par le géant de l'IT, M-CAM une institution financière qui conseille les entreprises et les investisseurs en matière de financement, de propriétés intellectuelles et de capitaux immatériels vient de publier une étude sur une partie méconnue de ses négociations : les brevets Android détenus par Microsoft. En effet suite à ce rachat, le gouvernement chinois a entamé un examen antitrust, ce dernier a permis de mettre au jour une liste détaillée de 310 brevets Microsoft, comprenant 73 brevets de type SEPs (Standard-Essential Patents for smartphones), 127 brevets implémentés sous Android et 110 brevets de type non-SEPs). Selon l'étude de M-CAM, cette publication traduit la volonté du gouvernement chinois « de contrecarrer la mainmise de Microsoft sur le marché des smartphones », alors que la divulgation de la liste détaillée permettra aux fabricants « de découvrir qu'ils détiennent des brevets sur des technologies Android antérieures à ceux de Microsoft, de quoi ouvrir une brèche qui pourrait aboutir à une renégociation ou à l'octroi de licence par Microsoft. » M-CAM s'est aussi intéressée à la valeur commerciale des 127 brevets actuellement implémentés sous Android, elle révèle que seulement 21% des brevets sont à valeur commerciale, de quoi mettre en doute la viabilité globale des packages de licences de Microsoft.»...
Source: http://www.developpez.com | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«L'administration Obama a volé samedi au secours du groupe américain Apple dans la guerre des brevets qui l'oppose au sud-coréen Samsung, en annulant une décision qui l'aurait empêché de vendre certains produits aux Etats-Unis. Le gouvernement américain a eu recours à un droit de veto qu'il n'avait plus employé depuis 1987 et "décidé de désapprouver" une décision juridique défavorable à Apple prise en juin par la Commission américaine du commerce international (USITC), selon une lettre adressée à cet organisme par le représentant américain au Commerce, Michael Froman. Saisie d'une plainte déposée par Samsung en aout 2011, l'USITC avait estimé que certains smartphones iPhone, tablettes iPad et baladeurs iPod d'Apple violaient des brevets du groupe sud-coréen et interdit en conséquence leur importation depuis l'Asie, où ils sont fabriqués, vers les Etats-Unis. Cela revenait à empêcher le groupe américain de les vendre sur son marché domestique. La décision était une victoire importante pour Samsung, qui s'oppose à Apple pour des affaires de brevets devant les tribunaux de plusieurs pays. Elle restait toutefois symbolique, car elle ne concernait que des produits relativement anciens d'Apple, notamment les smartphones iPhone 3 et 4 vendus par l'opérateur AT&T, et les tablettes iPad et iPad 2. Les produits les plus récents du groupe à la pomme, et donc les plus vendus comme son iPhone 5, n'étaient pas touchés.»...
Source: http://www.journaldunet.com | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«A UNITED STATES federal court of appeals has ruled that software should not be patentable, signalling the possible death of the software patent. Last week, New Zealand banned software patents, saying that "a computer program is not an invention" and that software patents stall innovation in the information technology industry. It looks like the US might be about to follow suit, as the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a 135 page decision on Friday that could signal the end of software patents. In the case CLS Bank v. Alice Corp, the court ruled, although not unanimously, that four US software patents held by electronics marketplace Alice shouldn't have been eligible for patents in the first place. The Australian company had argued that an idea is "patentable if the computer plays a significant role in the invention". Judge Kimberly Moore wrote, "Let's be clear: if all of these claims, including the system claims, are not patent-eligible, this case is the death of hundreds of thousands of patents, including all business method, financial system, and software patents as well as many computer implemented and telecommunications patents." However, the court failed to reach a consensus on how to determine what software is patentable, a lack of clarity that has since been criticised for offering little guidance to further cases. Technology companies had hoped that US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which specialises in patent cases, would provide clarity on what software is patentable. IBM, for example, has argued that software should be patentable, while companies like Google and Dell have said that software is not inventive enough to deserve patent protection. The court's ruling and several variously dissenting opinions are available at Groklaw»...
Source: http://www.theinquirer.net | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«The large, bearded man bounded to the front of the room last Friday, hand thrust into the air, fingers shaking. It was a question-and-answer session, but he clearly wouldn't be able to wait long. He began speaking just before a conference organizer moved to hand him the microphone. "So many stupid insults-and mistakes!" shouted Richard Stallman, the father of the free software movement. "I proposed a way to solve the problem! It's elegant, and it gets right to the point. Your criticisms are completely wrong." The speaker he was denouncing, Professor John Duffy of the University of Virginia, had been defending software patents to the assembled crowd a moment ago. Duffy was actually proposing reforms, but as was the case with most speakers at this legal conference, Duffy's reforms weren't quite what Stallman was looking for. He was looking for a "safe harbor" for software-essentially, a total ban on any patents that touched on software. Duffy raised the specter that some things might not be invented at all without patents, in software and other fields. "The only thing worse than a patented technology that burdens the public is not having a technology at all," he said. Sure, some software patents were a pain, but others were protecting important work. "The question is, will you get very serious research that is patent-motivated? Speech recognition, for example, is very patent-intensive." In Stallman's view, the idea that society might be able to eliminate "bad patents" while keeping good ones is a kind of Jedi mind trick. Offering patents as a reward for software development-a system where the prize is a right to shut down someone else-is fatally flawed. "Consider the MP3 patent," said Stallman. "That caused a lot of harm. It's not trivial, it came from a research institute. But we can fund research institutes in other ways." The deprivation of some unnamed technology doesn't excuse a system that allows some developers to be subject to legal attacks, Stallman continued. We could live without those things. "Yes, we can be better off without certain things," said Stallman, finishing up his lecture to a flustered Duffy. "Maybe it wouldn't be quite as good, but we would all be okay. None of us would be shafted."»...
Source: http://arstechnica.com | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«La Commission européenne veut imposer une procédure de dépôt unique de brevet communautaire, qui couvrirait l'ensemble des états membres, pour un cout largement réduit pour les entreprises. Mais un tel "brevet unitaire européen" présente le double risque de rouvrir la porte aux brevets logiciels et d'amplifier la crise économique en multipliant les barrières à l'innovation. Faut-il craindre un retour du spectre des brevets logiciels en Europe ? Alors que le Parlement Européen avait écarté en 2005 la brevetabilité des logiciels au terme d'un très long débat, notamment grâce à l'influence du désormais retraité Michel Rocard, le fondateur des licences GNU et président de la Free Software Foundation #FSF# Richard Stallman redoute que le combat ne soit pas terminé. En 2006, à peine six mois après le vote du Parlement Européen, la Commission européenne avait remis l'ouvrage sur l'établi, par une voie détournée. Le commissaire Charles McCreevy, partisan des brevets logiciels, avait en effet ouvert une consultation publique "afin de déterminer comment une action future, dont le but est de créer un système de protection des brevets à l'échelle de l'UE, pourrait le mieux prendre en compte les besoins des parties intéressées". Il était alors question d'un brevet communautaire, dont Richard Stallman explique dans le Guardian qu'il est un moyen de refaire revenir la brevetabilité du logiciel par la petite porte. Le projet a mis du temps à murir, mais le risque frappe à la porte. En effet, comme l'explique Stallman, le projet de "brevet unitaire européen" actuellement en discussion permettrait aux inventeurs de s'adresser à l'Office européen des brevets #OEB# pour obtenir une protection globale dans l'ensemble des Etats membres de l'Union Européenne #moins l'Espagne et l'Italie qui ont refusé#, sans attendre une validation par chacun des pays. Or même si la Convention sur le brevet européen exclut à son article 52 la brevetabilité des "programmes d'ordinateur", l'OEB a une interprétation très large qui lui fait, en pratique, délivrer nombre de brevets sur des logiciels. Parce qu'elle prélève des frais sur chaque dépôt, l'OEB a tout intérêt à accepter un maximum de brevets, comme l'avaient dénoncé ses examinateurs lors d'une grève en 2008.»...
Source: http://www.numerama.com | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«This week Google blasted Apple, Microsoft and others for abusing patents to wage an "anticompetitive" battle against the search company's popular mobile operating system. The surprisingly pointed blog post by Chief Legal Officer David Drummond echoed mounting criticisms of the sorry state of the patent system. "Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it," Drummond said. Google is absolutely right about that, but it's not - and it shouldn't be - a get-out-of-jail-free card for all patent infringement. Some of the patents in question might well be worthy ones that Google shouldn't be able to freely use just because most are, as it says, "bogus." Among other issues, Drummond argued that Apple and Microsoft teamed up, along with other tech companies, to acquire two big patent portfolios from Novell and Nortel to "make sure Google didn't get them." Apple and Microsoft, of course, are among Google's key rivals in the smart-phone market.»...
Source: http://www.sfgate.com | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«New Zealand is passing a law which makes most software unpatentable. The only exception, added yesterday in an amendment, is to allow patents on inventions that contain embedded software."My decision follows a meeting with the chair of the Commerce Committee where it was agreed that a further amendment to the bill is neither necessary nor desirable," said commerce minister Simon Power. The New Zealand Computer Society has welcomed the move, saying that software patents significantly stifle innovation. Copyright protection, it says, is more than adequate to protect intellectual property. "Many software companies in New Zealand, creating outstanding and innovative software, live a constant risk that their entire business will be wound up overnight due to litigious action by a patent holder," says chairman Paul Matthews. "This has led to many a 'patent troll' company, primarily in the US. These are non-software companies who exist only to buy up old patents with the sole intention of suing innovative software companies for apparent breach of these patents. The effects of this have been chilling."»...
Source: http://www.tgdaily.com | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«Par un jugement du 19 mars dernier, le TGI de Paris a annulé un brevet portant sur un moteur de recherche de bases de données car le procédé ne constitue pas une invention susceptible de brevetabilité. Selon les juges, « la description du procédé revendiqué se borne à en affirmer l'objet sans préciser les moyens techniques à mettre en oeuvre, ne détaillant que les résultats et possibilités offertes pour l'utilisateur sans mentionner les caractéristiques techniques du moteur de recherche lui-même ». Pour la première fois en la matière, un brevet est annulé pour défaut de brevetabilité et non sur la base d'une absence d'activité inventive, fondement souvent retenu par les tribunaux. La société Exalead avait déposé un brevet européen protégé en France et intitulé « outil et procédé de recherche unifiée en utilisant des catégories et des mots-clés ». Sinequa avait développé une autre solution de recherche et de navigation utilisée notamment par les sites internet du Sénat et du ministère de la Culture. Exalead considérant que le moteur de recherche portait atteinte à son brevet l'a assignée en justice. Mais son action s'est retournée contre elle. Sinequa a remis en cause la validité de ce titre de propriété industrielle et a obtenu gain de cause. Sinequa avait fait valoir que le brevet revendiqué était dépourvu de caractère technique, condition de la brevetabilité. Elle avait invoqué le fait que l'invention était réalisable de façon totalement intellectuelle, sans nécessiter la moindre mise en oeuvre de moyen technique. Dans sa notification, l'OEB avait d'ailleurs invité Exalead à « formuler un problème technique et à expliquer [comment] le problème [était] résolu par les caractéristiques techniques des revendications » mais avait finalement délivré le brevet. Or, le TGI de Paris note que les moyens techniques ne sont nulle part décrits. Pour conclure à l'absence de brevetabilité de l'invention en cause, le tribunal s'appuie sur l'avis de l'INPI donné à l'occasion d'une demande de dépôt de brevet par Sinequa, identique à celui d'Exalead.»...
Source: http://www.legalis.net | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances,Crise/Analyse de Crise

«BELLEVUE, Wash. — Nathan Myhrvold wants to shake up the marketplace for ideas. His mission and the activities of the company he heads, Intellectual Ventures, a secretive $5 billion investment firm that has scooped up 30,000 patents, inspire admiration and angst.Admirers of Mr. Myhrvold, the scientist who led Microsoft's technology development in the 1990s, see an innovator seeking to elevate the economic role and financial rewards for inventors whose patented ideas are often used without compensation by big technology companies. His detractors see a cynical operator deploying his bulging patent trove as a powerful bargaining chip, along with the implied threat of costly litigation, to prod high-tech companies to pay him lucrative fees. They call his company "Intellectual Vultures." White hat or black hat, Intellectual Ventures is growing rapidly and becoming a major force in the marketplace for intellectual capital. Its rise comes as Congress is considering legislation, championed by large technology companies, that would make it more difficult for patent holders to win large damage awards in court ...” changes that Mr. Myhrvold has opposed in Congressional testimony and that his company has lobbied against. Intellectual Ventures spent more than $1 million on lobbying last year, according to public filings compiled by OpenSecrets.org.»...
Source: http://www.nytimes.com | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Lobbying/Analyse de Lobbying

«Technologie - L'association Open Invention Network a racheté 22 brevets ayant appartenu à Microsoft afin de prévenir tout risque de spéculation ou de procès mal intentionné. Comptant parmi ses membres IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Sony, Nec et Philips, l'Open Invention Network vient d'acquérir 22 brevets relatifs à Linux autrefois détenus par Microsoft dans son portefeuille open source. Ces brevets ont ensuite été revendus par Redmond à l'Allied Security Trust, qui vient donc de les rétrocéder à l'OIN. Une collaboration entre les deux organisations qualifiée « d'exemplaire ». Le but premier de ce rachat était d'empêcher que ces brevets ne tombent entre les mains de personnes ou de sociétés cherchant à se faire de l'argent facile à coup de procès qui pourraient entraver le développement de Linux. C'est ce que l'on appelle les « patent trolls », des organisations à l'affut de brevets à céder qui leur permettent ensuite d'intenter des procès avec de juteux dommages et intérêts à la clé.»...
Source: http://www.zdnet.fr | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«Concerns have been raised that Tuesday's Great Word Injunction could beget a bunch of nasty children. i4i chairman Loudon Owen told Redmond Magazine, which got a more detailed audience with him than most - we got as far as the idea that Microsoft might get a stay, he went into a snit about "It's our technology and we're going to get paid for it," then found something else to do promising to call back and never did - anyway, he suggested to Redmond Magazine that there might be other offenders out and that Microsoft's broader Office Open XML (OOXML) document format technology - you know, the controversial ISO/IEC standard 29500 - might be implicated. It appears that Owen thinks the i4i patent is "potentially integral to the standard." Redmond Magazine also touched base with Burton Group research director Guy Creese, who said that the next version of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) - the rival ISO/IEC standard - could have a problem. The current ODF 1.1 is clean but, he said, "ODF 1.2 will move to a similar custom schema that OOXML has." Gartner analyst Brian Prentice is also wondering about the patent's impact on ODF. "But, if the validity of the patent is upheld," he writes, "then the immediate question is whether this will also impact ODF. If so, then this turns out to be a significantly more important issue and one which will crystallize the fury of the anti-patentistas. No longer will this be the source of some Schadenfreude at Microsoft's expense. This will be seen as yet another attack on open standards and open software."»...
Source: http://opensource.sys-con.com | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«L'Office Européen des Brevets a mis en ligne début juin une brochure sur le brevet et le logiciel. Sommaire : Les brevets relatifs à des inventions mises en oeuvre par ordinateur et leurs avantages pour la société La pratique à l'OEB : le cadre juridique Exemples d'inventions brevetables impliquant l'utilisation de logiciels Le brevet européen : une qualité et une sécurité juridique élevées Des brevets pour les logiciels
Source: http://documents.epo.org | Source Status
Source: http://deanie.ultimteam.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Réglementation - La Commission européenne a réitéré son engagement en faveur d'un brevet européen pour remplacer le système actuel de brevets nationaux considéré comme un frein. La Commission européenne a dévoilé sa stratégie pour les années 2010 à 2020 dans le domaine des TIC (technologies de l'information et des communications). Un domaine que Viviane Reding, commissaire européenne chargée de la Société de l'information et des médias, juge « d'une importance capitale pour la reprise économique ». L'objectif affiché est donc d'amener l'Europe à la première place mondiale. Pour y parvenir, Viviane Reding considère qu'il faudra doubler les investissements publics et privés en recherche et développement dans les TIC d'ici à 2020.» [...] «L'exécutif européen a aussi rappelé son attachement à la création d'un brevet unique européen, jugeant que « le cadre pour la régulation, la standardisation et le régime des droits de protection intellectuelle doit être adapté à de nouvelles réalités ». Plus précisément, elle ajoute que « le système de droits sur la propriété intellectuelle doit être amélioré par la création d'un brevet communautaire pour les société innovantes dans les TIC, afin de protéger leurs inventions au sein du marché unique ». »...
Source: http://www.zdnet.fr | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Lobbying/Analyse de Lobbying

«Alison Brimelow, president of the European Patent Office, has referred the deeply contentious question about how to assess the patentability of software-related inventions to her office's top appeals body, the enlarged board of appeal (EBoA), the EPO said late Friday. Referrals to the EBoA are rare, happening only with the most complex questions. Another issue being considered by the EBoA is the question of whether human embryos can be patented. The patentability of software has provoked fierce debate in Europe over the past 10 years. Technically, software is unpatentable. However, many software-related inventions have been granted European patents.» [...] «They address four aspects of patentability in the field of computer programming, the EPO said.The first question relates to the relevance of the category of a patent claim. The other three questions ask where the line should be drawn between what is excluded from patentability and what could be considered a patentable invention. »...
Source: http://www.nytimes.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«The new film "Flash of Genius" may be based on a 1960s case of patent infringement, but its David-vs.-Goliath story involving independent inventors going up against monolithic corporations continues to spin off sequels well into the 21st Century, says a Minneapolis-based patent attorney. And while the movie uses the automotive industry to tell its tale of innovation, obsession and redemption, the new dramas are being played out on the e-commerce and Internet search stages. In fact, just three days after the film starring Greg Kinnear opened in theaters, a small Kentucky company, iLor, argued its claim of patent infringement against search giant Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Latest News about Google in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. iLor alleges that Google is using its method for users to interact with a hyperlink that turns up in search results without actually clicking on that link. Summary judgments found in Google's favor at the district court level. Perhaps iLor can take some encouragement from the story of Robert Kearns, portrayed by Greg Kinnear in "Flash of Genius." Kearns was a Detroit university professor whose basement tinkering produced the first intermittent windshield wiper for cars in 1963. The movie details Kearns' efforts to get the automotive industry to give him credit for the invention, even as it dangled millions of dollars in his face to try to get him to quietly go away. His subsequent court battles would cost him his family, his health and 12 years of his life. Patent Fights in the E-Commerce Arena "His (Kearns') invention would survive as a valid innovative invention," Rachel Zimmerman, patent attorney for Merchant and Gould, told the E-Commerce Times. "It really was a flash of genius. The automotive companies had worked on it for years and years and they couldn't figure it out, and he could."»...
Source: http://www.ecommercetimes.com | Source Status Categories: Brevets Logiciels,Tendances

«Three political groups in the European Parliament (EP) have warned that software patents are re-emerging into EU politics with an EP vote scheduled for next month. Last year the EP derailed a proposed directive that, critics argued, would have legitimised software patents in Europe. On Thursday the PES, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL parliamentary groups warned that a measure facing a parliamentary vote on 11 or 12 October could take up where the failed software patent directive left off. Internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy is to deliver a speech next week promoting the measure, called the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA). In rebuttal, the three groups have filed a motion calling for "balance between the interests of patent holders and the broader public interest in innovation and competitive markets", a spokesman for the groups said on Thursday. The motion argues that the EPLA weakens EU democracy, compromises judicial independence, increases litigation costs and may "[expose] SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) to greater risks".»...
Source: http://news.zdnet.co.uk | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Technology companies will find it easier to safeguard their innovations in the UK after a court ruled that software should receive wider patent protection. The Court of Appeal said today that complex software such as programmes designed to make mobile phones and computers work faster can be patented in the UK. Previously, manufacturers could claim commercial exclusivity for their products under copyright laws but had less legal protection for underlying technical processes. As a result of the ruling, developers are likely to find it easier to secure approval from the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO), which has traditionally been reluctant to grant patents to cover software. William Cook, a partner at Simmons and Simmons, said the court's decision would bring the UK's patent regime into line with Europe, which is much more open to granting software protection»...
Source: http://business.timesonline.co.uk | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«About the Author Bruce Perens is the creator of the Open Source Definition, the manifesto of Open Source and the criterion for Open Source software licensing. Perens represented Open Source at the United Nations World Summit on the Information News Linux News Linux Society, at the request of the United Nations Development Program. An appeals court has erased most of the doubt around Open Source licensing, permanently, in a decision that was extremely favorable toward projects like GNU, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and Linux. The man who prompted that decision could be described as the worst enemy a Free Software project could have. This is the story of how our community was able to benefit from that enemy. For a decade there'd been questions: Are Open Source licenses enforceable at all? Are their terms, calling for a patent detente or disclosure of source code, legal? Are they contracts, which require agreement by all parties to be valid, or licenses, which are binding even if you don't agree to then? What legal penalties can a Free Software developer employ: only token damages, or much more? The court's ruling makes the answers to these clear. Did such weighty questions come up in cases involving IBM, Sun, HP, or Red Hat? The court's ruling makes the answers to these clear. Did such weighty questions come up in cases involving IBM, Sun, HP, or Red Hat? No, this is the quirky world of Free Software: it was a court case about model trains.» [...] « Jacobsen's case against Katzer is ongoing, although this most important appeal is completed. He has not yet convinced the judge that Katzer lied on his patent application, but what if he does? There has been no criminal prosecution of anyone for lying ("perjury") on a patent application since 1974, when the patent office eliminated its enforcement department. Contrast that to what the defendant in a suit brought by the holder of a bogus patent faces: between $3 and $5 million dollars in legal fees per case. Without the beneficent legal team that came to Jacobsen's aid, winning such a case is so expensive that it's really losing. The current system of software patents in the United States makes it too easy for the Katzers of the world to come after others for big bucks, even when there is significant doubt regarding the validity of their own patents. The poor defendants have to spend millions just to prove that the patent being pursued against them isn't valid, bankrupting ! themselves in the process. »...
Source: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Chaque année, le nombre de brevets déposés en Europe augmente. Alors que les gouvernements y voient le signe d'une recherche en bonne santé, des examinateurs de l'Office européen des brevets manifestent et dénoncent un emballement néfaste à la qualité de l'innovation, encouragé pour des raisons purement financières et politiques. Les attaques contre les abus de propriété intellectuelle se multiplient ces dernières années sous l'influence des lobbys du logiciel libre, des groupes de défense des intérêts publics, des internautes qui réclament la possibilité de partager librement les oeuvres, des organisations qui militent contre la brevetabilité du vivant ou en faveur d'un assouplissement des règles de protection des molécules des médicaments à destination des pays les plus défavorisés. Après plus d'un siècle de laisser-faire où la propriété intellectuelle s'est toujours renforcée à coups d'accords internationaux (ce qu'ils essayent encore de faire), le balancier ne demande qu'à partir dans l'autre sens. En plus du développement d'Internet qui favorise le développement de mouvements alternatifs comme ceux des Creative Commons ou du GNU qui portent une autre vision de la protection des droits intellectuels, le climat géopolitique participe aussi à faire reculer le poids des lobbys industriels qui réclament toujours plus de protection. L'émergence de nouvelles puissances sans tradition de protection forte des droits de la propriété intellectuelle comme la Chine ou l'Inde, ou la "socialisation" de l'Amérique latine, participent à l'affaiblissement d'un système qui a régi l'économie de la création dans les pays du nord.»...
Source: http://www.numerama.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Une pétition mondiale sera lancée dans le cadre de la campagne World Day Against Software Patents demain mercredi 24 septembre. David Neal (Vnunet.com) 23-09-2008 Une pétition globale pour la sensibilisation aux brevets sur les logiciels sera lancée le 24 septembre dans le cadre du World Day Against Software Patents. Toujours à l'état de projet, cette pétition comprend des informations sur la façon dont les brevets sur les logiciels peuvent affecter les activités professionnelles, la recherche et le développement. L'organisation Stop Software Patents (Stop aux brevets sur les logiciels) demande aux parties intéressées de témoigner, et il sera demandé à toute personne ayant signé la pétition de remplir une version amendée à une date ultérieure. Cet effort est soutenu par une coalition de plus de quatre-vingts entreprises, associations et développeurs de logiciels, dans le but de mettre fin à l'octroi de brevets sur des produits logiciels. "Les régimes de brevet sur les logiciels limitent l'innovation"»...
Source: http://www.vnunet.fr | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some of the biggest players in the technology industry complain that the U.S. patent system is broken -- putting too many patents of dubious merit in the hands of people who can use them to drag companies and other inventors to court. An experimental program aims to give the public, including inventors, more of a voice in the patent system. An experimental program aims to give the public, including inventors, more of a voice in the patent system. And Blaise Mouttet, a small inventor in Alexandria, Virginia, thinks he knows why. The problem, he said, is that "there are too many lawyers and not enough inventors involved with the patent system." So Mouttet is taking part in an experimental program launched in June 2007 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and backed by the technology industry that is intended to give the public -- including inventors -- more of a voice in the system. The concept behind the program, called Peer-to-Patent, is straightforward: Publish patent applications on the Web for all to see and let anyone with relevant expertise -- academics, colleagues, even potential rivals -- offer input to be passed along to the Patent Office. By using the power of the Internet to tap the wisdom of the masses, Peer-to-Patent aims to dig up hard-to-find "prior art" -- evidence that an invention already exists or is obvious and therefore doesn't deserve a patent.» [...] «The goal is to locate prior art that Patent Office examiners might not find on their own -- and to produce better patents by reducing ones granted on applications that aren't novel. The hope is that this will drive innovation by improving the patent process and reducing the patent infringement lawsuits clogging the courts. »...
Source: http://www.cnn.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«SRI presses claims against IBM, Symantec SRI International, the research institute founded at Stanford University, accused an IBM Corp. unit and Symantec Corp. of infringing security software patents as a jury trial began this week. SRI, based in Menlo Park, Calif., sued the IBM unit and Symantec in 2004 in federal court in Wilmington over network-surveillance patents awarded since 2001 for methods of monitoring suspicious computer activity. The lawsuit targets the Proventia products made by IBM's Atlanta-based Internet Security Systems Inc. and Symantec's ManHunt line of software.»...
Source: http://www.delawareonline.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Brussels, 2nd September 2008 ...” A global coalition of more than 80 software companies, associations and developers has declared the 24th of September to be the "World Day Against Software Patents". Five years ago, on 24 September 2003, the European Parliament adopted amendments to limit the scope of patent law and thereby protect small software companies from the harmful effects of broad and trivial software patents. A global petition asking to effectively stop software patents worldwide will be launched on 24 September 2008, together with specific additional requests for certain regions such as Europe, the United States or India. On 24 September 2008, the World Day Against Software Patents will provide volunteers with the opportunity to express the growing concerns of users, businesses and developers. The granting of software patents by patent offices around the world affects their freedom to innovate. The organisers expect 24h of activities across the globe. Volunteers will gather in front of patent offices to inform the general public of the problems underlying software patenting. A global petition demanding to effectively stop software patents worldwide will be launched on the same day. In some regions of the world such as Europe, the United States, or India, dedicated campaigns are being prepared by local supporters. The organisers intend to celebrate the World Day on an annual basis unless substantive clarifications are adopted in national laws that stop software patenting along with their effects on the digital economy. Benjamin Henrion, initiator of the StopSoftwarePatents coalition effort, explains "The aim behind StopSoftwarePatents is to gather a worldwide coalition of businesses and civil society in order to get laws which clearly exempt software from patentable subject matter. This is the best solution for getting rid of 'patent trolls' and uncontrollable legal risks generated by software patents. The day the software industry forms a clear front against software patents will be the beginning of the end for the 'patent trolls'."»...
Source: http://stopsoftwarepatents.org | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«L'éditeur détient désormais la propriété intellectuelle des fonctions « bas de page » et « haut de page » (Page Up et Page Down), concrétisées par deux touches situées entre le clavier alphanumérique et le pavé numérique. L'Office américain des brevets a accepté le 19 aout la demande formulée en 2005 par Microsoft. Il s'agit donc du brevet 7,415,666 qui couvre « une méthode et un système dans un lecteur de document permettant d'obtenir un défilement de taille exacte, comme une page ». Les fonctions Page Up et Page Down sont antécédentes à 2005 ; le premier micro-ordinateur d'IBM, le 5100 datant de 1975, possédait déjà deux touches de ce type.»...
Source: http://www.zdnet.fr | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«The US Patent and Trademark Office is a convenient whipping boy for problems with the patent system. The USPTO famously approved the junk patents at the heart of the legal battle between Research in Motion and a patent-trolling firm called NTP. The USPTO belatedly recognized its mistake and began invalidating the patents, but didn't finish the job in time to save RIM from being forced to pay $612.5 million to avoid having its whole BlackBerry network shut down. Perhaps shaken by the negative publicity generated from that case and others, the USPTO seems to have gotten religion on patent quality. Over the last year, the courts have heard a series of cases in which the Patent Office has rejected software-related applications. The legal theories advanced by the Patent Office in these cases are causing consternation among software patent supporters. In an article last week at Patently-O, law professor John Duffy warns that the Patent Office has staked out positions that, if accepted by the courts, would amount to the de facto abolition of software patents. He's right that the Patent Office has become increasingly hostile to software patents in the last couple of years. However, it's far from clear that the end of software patents is imminent. And Duffy is dead wrong to suggest that fewer software patents would be bad for innovation. Growing hostility»...
Source: http://arstechnica.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc. In a series of cases including In re Nuijten, In re Comiskey and In re Bilski, the Patent and Trademark Office has argued in favor of imposing new restrictions on the scope of patentable subject matter set forth by Congress in § 101 of the Patent Act. In the most recent of these three...”the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal...”the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they "result in a physical transformation of an article" or are "tied to a particular machine."[1] Perhaps, the agency has conceded, some "new, unforeseen technology" might warrant an "exception" to this formalistic test, but in the agency's view, no such technology has yet emerged so there is no reason currently to use a more inclusive standard.[2] The Bilski en banc hearing attracted enormous attention, and yet there has remained a sense among many patent practitioners that the PTO's attempts to curtail section 101 would affect only a few atypical patent claims. The vast bulk of patents on software, business and information technology are thought by some not to be threatened because those innovations are typically implemented on a machine...”namely, a computer...”and the tie to a machine would provide security against the agency's contractions of § 101. Even if that view were right, the contraction of patent eligibility would be very troubling because the patent system is supposed to be designed to encourage the atypical, the unusual and the innovative. But that view is wrong.»...
Source: http://www.patentlyo.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Attempting to ride a wave of corporate and judicial disenchantment with aspects of the current patent system, a new project was unveiled Thursday designed to, as its name bluntly indicates, End Software Patents. (Press release is here. The group's "first yearly report" on the state of software patents is here.) The group is intended to become a clearinghouse for information and a hub for those strategizing legal challenges, according to its executive director, Ben Klemens. Though End Software Patents will not initiate litigation of its own, it will be on the lookout for appropriate test cases to support as they arise, he says. Though the project is being sponsored and funded by leaders of the Free and Open Source Software movement, it hopes to attract support from the wider community of businesses, financial institutions and universities that have all been blindsided in recent years by lawsuits over software patents and their close-cousins, business-method patents. The End Software Patents Web site, here, highlights a long list of diverse businesses that have been sued for allegedly infringing software patents, including the Green Bay Packers, OfficeMax, Caterpillar, Kraft Foods , ADT Security Services, AutoNation, Wal-Mart , Walgreen , Barnes & Noble, Circuit City Stores , Ford Motor , E I du Pont de Nemours and Co. , and so on. In most cases, the companies have been sued because of certain basic, routine functions performed on their Web sites ...” the way images are displayed, the way data is gathered or transmitted ...” which are said to infringe software patents. The group also hopes to attract support from the many financial institutions, including JP Morgan , Merrill Lynch , and NCR Corp. , that have been asked to pay patent holding company DataTreasury for permission to send check images over the Internet.»...
Source: http://legalpad.blogs.fortune.cnn.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«In November 2006, the UK Intellectual Property office, IPO, (formerly the Patent Office) made changes that excluded computer programs from cover by patent law. This forced patent owners to rely on allegations of indirect infringement to protect their assets and did not protect them from sales of programs abroad. To get round the problem, some companies dodged the UK patents office and submitted their patent applications via the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich. Although this could confer the same protection, it was a longer and more costly process and therefore out of reach for smaller businesses. The appeal was put forward by Nicholas Fox of patent attorneys Beresford & Co, after four of his firm's clients were refused patent applications for their programs. These included Astron Clinica, which developed a new method for analyzing skin images, and microcontroller developer Cyan Technology.»...
Source: http://www.cbronline.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Appeals court agrees to re-examine "business method" patents By John Soat InformationWeek février 23, 2008 12:00 AM (From the février 25, 2008 issue) A federal court is considering the definition of a "business method" patent as part of an appeals process that could affect the ongoing controversy over software patents. On Feb. 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said it would review an appeal made in a case involving an application for a patent related to a method for managing risk in commodities trades. The judges will examine "whether a process is patent-eligible," according to the court order, and possibly reconsider a 10-year-old decision that upheld a patent for a system that optimized mutual funds. That decision, in a case called State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group Inc., opened the door for business method patents, which protect a process as opposed to, say, a chemical formula. It also reinforced the patentability of software algorithms. The State Street Bank decision led to a flood of software patent applications. "That decision, coupled with the dot-com boom, brought about a lot of abuses in the patent system," says John Ferrell, a Silicon Valley patent attorney. Patents were granted, for instance, for obvious ways of conducting business on the Web.»...
Source: http://www.informationweek.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«WASHINGTON - A group of high-tech companies paid Elmendorf Strategies LLC $600,000 in 2007 to lobby the federal government in favor of patent reform. The Coalition for Patent Fairness, which includes Microsoft Corp. (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) and Apple Inc. (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ), paid the firm $300,000 in the second half of the year, according to a form disclosed Feb. 13. Elmendorf Strategies lobbied in favor of patent reform legislation moving through Congress. The coalition says the reform proposals will reduce frivolous patent litigation and lead to higher-quality patents. Biotech and pharmaceutical firms, meanwhile, charge that the bills currently before Congress will weaken patent protection.»...
Source: http://www.forbes.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«12 milliards d'euros. C'est ce que réclame une société allemande répondant au nom d'IP-Com à Nokia, pour l'utilisation de deux technologies dont elle prétend posséder les brevets. IP-Com est une de ces sociétés qui font du rachat de brevets leur principale occupation. En 2007, elle rachetait ceux du fabricant Bosch ; elle en possède actuellement plus de 160. Le fond d'investissement américain Fortress, qui en est actionnaire à hauteur de 50 %, a promis de l'aider dans le financement du procès. "Nous n'avons pas été en mesure de nous entendre sur le montant à payer pour l'utilisation de la licence" explique le directeur d'IP-Com. Evidemment, 12 milliards d'euros, c'est pas rien. "C'est largement au dessus de ce que nous avons pu entendre jusque là" a déclaré un porte-parole de Nokia. "Nous nous défendrons fermement.»...
Source: http://www.ratiatum.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Hi-tech companies will be able to patent software programs after a key court decision that may move the UK closer to Europe in its treatment of computerrelated inventions. The High Court yesterday said that the Patent Office was incorrectly applying the law in automatically rejecting claims for computer programs, in a case brought by four small British businesses. The ruling should help level the playing field in an industry dominated by corporate titans such as Microsoft and Oracle, intellectual property experts said. "This is a win for hard-working inventors and small businesses, who need patent protection to take advantage of any niche in the market," said Ed Round, a patent attorney at Marks & Clerk. The dispute centred on a practice note issued by the Patent Office in November 2006, stating that computer programs were generally not patentable in the wake of a high-profile ruling in a case brought by an Australian inventor, Neal Macrossan. The guidance put the UK at odds with the European Patent Office, which has allowed companies to patent computer programs if they can demonstrate some sort of innovative technical effect.»...
Source: http://www.ft.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«The revised European Patent Convention took effect this week, bringing in a system designed to substantially simplify patent issues for businesses, according to the European Patent Office. The updated Patent Convention has been 10 years in the making, and updates the original 1973 agreement with more flexibility, more legal certainty, simpler procedures and reduced costs, the European Patent Office (EPO) said. Patents are becoming increasingly important for IT departments and the risk of software patent infringement has become a significant factor. Software patents have not yet made the impact in Europe that they have in the US, but a large number have been granted this side of the Atlantic, and proposed changes such as the controversial European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) could make them more effective.»...
Source: http://news.zdnet.co.uk | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«MUNICH - The European Patent Office (EPO) rules for full revocation after a hearing in the opposition of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) against Amazon.com's infamous patent on the online purchase of gifts. The patent EP927945 is a descendant of the controversial One-Click Patent, which was granted to Amazon in the USA but was partially revoked there due to lack of novelty in October 2007. The FFII believes this is a pure software patent and prohibited by article 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC). This reasoning is no longer foreign to the opposition division of EPO, when Amazon's representative maintained that the method to be patented comprised a computer, and therefore represented patentable new technology, the patent examiner retorted: "Computers were always able to do that. You simply programmed them!" Nevertheless, in today's first instance ruling, EPO could not yet bring itself to a rejection due to unpatentable subject matter. This forced a mental balancing act. The rejection was based on the lack of an "inventive step", which gave Amazon the right to formulate new patent claims. Since these were violating formal prescriptions of article 123 EPC the patent was then revoked in its entirety. "This is highly artificial and shows that the battle over software patents is still far from being over. However, a few years ago EPO would just have followed the USA - and therefore Amazon. Today, at least the fundamental problems are better recognized," Founder of the FFII Hartmut Pilch said.»...
Source: http://www.ag-ip-news.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Eric S. Maskin vient de se voir décerner le Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, plus communément appelé Prix Nobel d'économie. Il partage le prix avec Leonid Hurwicz et Roger B. Myerson. Ils sont récompensés pour avoir jeté les bases de la théorie de la conception des mécanismes, qui tente d'expliquer les raisons qui font qu'un marché (défini notamment par des mécanismes d'enchères) fonctionne bien ou non. Le travail d'Eric Maskin est particulièrement pertinent pour la conception d'instruments de marché dans le domaine environnemental (marchés de droits d'émission par exemple). Mais depuis 1985, Eric Maskin était aussi un fervent adversaire des brevets logiciels à travers le concept d'invention incrémentale. Avec James Bessen, il était notamment le co-auteur d'un article remarquable en 2000 sur les relations entre l'innovation incrémentale, les brevets et l'investissement dans la R&D. Cet article a joué un rôle important dans les débats sur la brevetabilité des logiciels. Il démontrait en effet que lorsque l'innovation incrémentale joue un rôle important dans un domaine (comme c'est le cas pour les logiciels), les brevets, loin d'y créer une incitation à l'innovation agissent comme une contre-incitation.»...
Source: http://www.zdnet.fr | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«William R. Hawkins Wednesday, September 26, 2007 SENATE NEEDS TO RETHINK PATENT "REFORM" The House narrowly passed a patent reform bill (H.R. 1908) on September 7 and sent it to the Senate. One important amendment delayed indefinitely the shift of the U.S. patent system from the first-to-invent to the first-to-file system. The Department of Commerce had objected to making such a change without first negotiating a grace period with the European Union and Japan to protect American inventors. Protecting American inventors, whose innovations have made the United States the envy of the world, must remain the focus of the patent system as was intended when the Founding Fathers wrote the protection of intellectual property into the Constitution. Unfortunately, the intent of this "reform" bill is to weaken the law's protection of inventors. Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat who sponsored the bill, made this intent clear. His press release, issued last July when the bill came out of the House Judiciary committee, states that the legislation is designed to, "deter abusive practices by patent holders, provide meaningful, low-cost alternatives to litigation for challenging patent validity and harmonize U.S. patent law with most other countries." The bill makes the infringement of patents easier, and lessens the penalties if caught. The bill is backed by Microsoft and other major IT firms who dominate their markets and don't want to be bothered checking who owns the technology they have grabbed and used. Microsoft lost a $520 million award to Eolas Technologies and the University of California in 2003 for patent infringement. In another case, it had a $1.5 billion judgement overturned on appeal this last August, but faces a retrial. On September 17, Microsoft lost a court appeal in Europe, and while patents were not the issue, the words of European Commissioner Neelie Kroes could be applied to the patent debate: the case "sends a clear signal that super-dominant companies cannot abuse their position to hurt consumers and dampen innovation." Rather than change its bullying behavior, Microsoft would rather lobby to change the law. H.R.1908 is opposed by the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, smaller domestic manufacturers, many Fortune 100 companies (e.g., Caterpillar, Corning, Milliken), major research universities, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce, the National Venture Capital Association, the Patent Office Professional Association (i.e., the patent examiners), and many labor unions. In addition, the Bush Administration issued a statement of policy opposing "limits on the discretion of a court in determining damages adequate to compensate for an infringement. Making this change to a reasonably well-functioning patent legal system is unwarranted and risks reducing the rewards from innovation." The patent "reformers" want to lock-in minimalist awards for infringement, and not allow judges to apply penalties more in line with the true scale of their transgression.» [...] « The bullying tactics of Microsoft and its ilk are well known, and have been condemned by courts in both the United States and Europe. There is a far greater national interest in the promotion and protection of innovation across the economy. Congress should not “reform” the patent system just to benefit one corporate sector – especially a sector whose desire to weaken the protection of other people’s intellectual property for its own gain is fundamentally illegitimate. The Senate needs to make major changes in the House passed version of H.R. 1908 (essentially rewriting it), or drop the entire” reform” effort by simply killing the counterproductive House bill. »...
Source: http://www.americaneconomicalert.org | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Linux users in the UK could face a greater threat from Microsoft than previously thought, but experts agree that British open-source users are in far less danger than US users from Microsoft's claim that open-source software infringes its patents. Microsoft has claimed that Linux and other open-source software infringes 235 of its patents. Although the company has refused to say which patents are involved, the risk must be lower in the UK than the US, because the company has far fewer patents in the UK, argued Andrew Katz, a solicitor at Moorcrofts, last week. However, Microsoft does have more patents affecting the UK than the 51 UK patent applications Katz quoted, because Redmond also has a few hundred European patents which might have force here, depending on the decisions of UK courts, said David Pearce, an associate at Nottingham-based patent attorneys Eric Potter Clarkson, on the IPKat blog.» [...] «"For obvious reasons, and not just those relating to cost, most big companies nowadays much prefer to prosecute their patent applications before the European Patent Office rather than the UK Intellectual Property Office." »...
Source: http://news.zdnet.co.uk | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Is patent reform dead? Observers have dwindling hopes this year for passage of Senate Bill 1145, or the Patent Reform Act of 2007, which weakens the patent system by making it easier to invalidate junk patents and capping damages on patent lawsuits. Technology heavyweights like Microsoft, Apple, Google and Cisco have strongly backed the legislation, seeking relief from the small litigious companies called patent trolls. But now the technology industry's own employees are undermining their cause. On Monday, the IEEE...” the largest professional society for electrical engineers, many of whom work for the very tech companies lobbying for patent reform ...”wrote Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid taking a strong stand against the bill. The letter argues: We believe that much of the legislation is a disincentive to inventiveness, and stifles new businesses and job growth by threatening the financial rewards available to innovators in U.S. industry. Passage of the current patent reform bill language would only serve to relax the very laws designed to protect American innovators and prevent infringement of their ideas...¦ IEEE-USA believes that, left as is, the patent reform legislation will create an environment that is harmful to individual inventors and small businesses. We are concerned that S. 1145 favors the companies with the financial resources that enable them to tread on others' patent rights by commercializing works and inventions they did not create.»...
Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«NEW YORK: David Goldin, a small-business owner, counts himself as one of the first winners to emerge from all the changes now roiling a long-staid corner of the law - patents. Goldin said he has spent thousands of hours flying all over the United States in search of obscure accounting records and talking to people in the financial services industry before finding 48 typewritten pages in the archives of a company called Payment Tech in July 2006. That and other evidence he gathered were instrumental, he said, in persuading the U,S, District Court for the Eastern District of Texas this month to invalidate a patent held by a Georgia company called AdvanceMe on the way it makes cash advances to merchants in return for a cut of their future credit card receipts. AdvanceMe had accused Goldin's own cash advance business, AmeriMerchant, of infringing on its patent. "It's a victory against patent trolls," Goldin said. "This has changed the landscape. The days of coming up with an obvious idea and patenting it and using legal extortion are over." The Texas ruling was one of the first to apply a new test established by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 30 that makes it more difficult to obtain patents on new products that combine elements of already existing patents. Experts say the Texas opinion was certainly the first to apply the new standard to the financial services section and probably the first to apply it to a business method.»...
Source: http://www.iht.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Discerning what's obvious and what isn't when it comes to technology patents became a bit less gray last week when a federal judge in San Francisco reversed himself and abruptly dismissed a case brought against RealNetworks. Attorneys as well as U.S. patent examiners say Judge William Schwarzer's surprising about-face is just the first of what will be many reverberations felt in courtrooms in the coming months, changing not only the way patent-infringement cases are adjudicated but also whether or not patents are granted in the first place. RealNetworks (Quote) is the first high-profile beneficiary of a new standard established in April when the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of KSR International v. Teleflex Inc. At the core of the Court's decision was the notion of "obviousness," a fundamental component of patent law. In its ruling, the High Court said the current "rigid" application of existing tests for determining obviousness that courts have used since 1851 should be changed to allow for a more "expansive and flexible approach" that gives judges more latitude to apply commonsense to these lawsuits. This fundamental shift in determining obviousness, experts say, means technology companies with legitimate patents will have a much easier time defending themselves from expensive and occasionally frivolous patent-infringement lawsuits. And companies that have simply tied together obvious combinations of existing products - for example adding an eraser to the tip of pencil - will have a much harder time making their case in court. "There has been a confidence crisis within the high-tech industry in regard to some of these patents," Morgan Reed, executive director of the Association for Competitive Technology, told internetnews.com.»...
Source: http://www.internetnews.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«All this talk of a need for patent "deform" is but a red herring fabricated by a handful of large tech firms as a diversion away from the real issue...that they have no valid defense against charges they are using other parties' technologies without permission. The objective of these large firms is not to fix the patent system, but to destroy it or pervert it so only they may obtain and defend patents; to make it a sport of kings. Patents are a threat against their market dominance. They would rather use their size alone to secure their market position. Patents of others, especially small entities, jeopardize that. For example, the proposed change to eliminate the use of injunctions would only further encourage blatant infringement. Any large company would merely force you to make them take a license. They would have little to lose. Everything would be litigated to death -if a small entity can come up with the cash to pursue. That's what these large multinationals are betting against. This legislation in regressive, not progressive. Sadly, some legislators and other parties have been duped by these slick firms and their well greased lawyers, lobbyists (some disguised as trade or public interest groups), and stealth PR firms. Don't be surprised to find the Washington lobbyist scandal spreading into the patent deform proceedings.»...
Source: http://www.californiachronicle.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«The U.S. patent system transformation long sought by high-tech industry players like Microsoft, Amazon.com and Cisco Systems may finally be gaining momentum in Congress. On Thursday evening, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved by a 13-5 vote an amended version of the Patent Reform Act of 2007. Supporters say the proposal would go a long way toward staving off expensive court litigation, limiting what are perceived as excessive damage awards, and keeping questionable patents off the books in the first place. "We have reaffirmed our commitment to ensuring that our nation's patent laws promote and protect the inventiveness of all of our industries," Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who co-sponsored the bill with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), said in a statement after the vote. The Senate action followed incremental changes at earlier committee meetings and arrived just one day after a similar bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee by a unanimous voice vote. The bills were identical when they were unveiled with some fanfare at a press conference back in April but are now slightly different, thanks to various amendments. Those inconsistencies will have to be reconciled if the full slate of House and Senate politicians ultimately approve the bills in floor votes. The relatively swift action by both committees comes in sharp contrast to the direction of patent law debates in previous sessions of Congress. The last attempt at such massive overhauls sputtered and ultimately died over intense disagreements mostly arising from differences in how various industries incorporate patents in their business models. Arguments for and against»...
Source: http://news.zdnet.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«perspective The patent system is supposed to support innovation. Signs that it does so erratically should concern members of Congress as they prepare for to vote on the Patent Reform Act of 2007. The nation's founders could not have imagined the complex, controversial patent system that we have today. The patent appeals court has expanded the patent system to embrace logic, business models, athletic movements, and much of basic science--in short, anything. Yet, the system remains resolutely simple, embracing this new diversity on its own terms: one size fits all. Does it make sense to treat a method of teaching the same as a $10 billion drug? Does it make sense to view the high cost of clinical trials through the same lens as debugging a computer program? What really happens when one size fits all?» [...] «The system has traded the science-based culture of experimentation and innovation for a straightjacket designed by and for lawyers. It has led to an endless quest for "legal certainty" that has perversely generated enormous legal costs and increased liabilities for market-oriented investments. It has led to a patent office that thinks its mission is "to help customers get patents." It has yielded a centralized patent appeals court that has consistently expanded the volume, scope and power of patents.Whatever happens to patent reform this year, the intensity of the debate makes clear that it is time to take patents seriously, very seriously. »...
Source: http://news.com.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«It's such a tremendously bad idea that it's almost bound to succeed. Microsoft has filed another patent, this one for an "advertising framework" that uses "context data" from your hard drive to show you advertisements and "apportion and credit advertising revenue" to ad suppliers in real time. Yes, Redmond wants to own the patent on the mother of all adware. Related Stories * Microsoft Malware Protection Center opens for business * Mexican tycoon elbows past Gates for "richest man" honors The application, filed in 2006, describes a multi-faceted, robust ad-delivering system that lives on a "user computer, whether it's part of the OS, an application or integrated within applications." "Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key words or other information that may be used to target advertisements," says the filing. "The advertising framework may host several components for receiving and processing the context data, refining the data, requesting advertisements from an advertising supplier, for receiving and forwarding advertisements to a display client for presentation, and for providing data back to the advertising supplier." The adware framework would leave almost no data untouched in its quest»...
Source: http://arstechnica.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Opponents of attempts to allow software to be patented in the European Union warned Monday that new consultations on an E.U.-wide general patent could be used to reintroduce software patents through the back door. Speaking at a panel discussion on implications of a new attempt by the European Commission to overhaul the E.U.'s patent system, the president of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) warned that such a review could lead to software patents. "If you take the case law of the EPO (European Patent Office) and apply it across the board, that means allowing software patents," said Pieter Hintjens, who is also founder and managing director of a Belgian software company, iMatix. Hintjens said that, from his contacts with the chief executive officers of small and medium-size businesses, it was clear they did not like and did not trust software patents. He called patents in a technology-driven sector "obscene." He cited a patent held by a company in Belgium called All is Blue which covered the management of e-mail and address data in response to text messages as an example of a "trivial" patent where the company was trying to earn money from exploiting its patent rights.»...
Source: http://www.intergovworld.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Where do we stand in the discussion about patents on computer-implemented inventions (CII patents) two years after rejection in the European Parliament? This was the perspective under which the EPO had invited members of the European Parliament, representatives from industry and enterprise, NGOs and IP specialists to review developments since the rejection of the CII directive. Approximately 100 people attended the one-day conference in Brussels, organised by the EPO. The conference was opened with statements from two leading members of the European Parliament, Eva Lichtenberger (GREEN/Austria) and Jorgo Chatzimarkakis (ALDE/Germany), who clearly defined the current patent system as an enabling factor for Europe's prosperity. Regarding initiatives supporting Chinese SMEs, the MEP warned that European competitors should not be frightened off:" "The EPO is the cornerstone of the patent world, which manages to maintain high standards. The US grants too many patents and of too low quality which are cheaper to obtain and often quite trivial. The Chinese Patent Office is fully funding patents of SMEs and thereby fostering speedy innovation. Thus, the European system is under threat. The existing CII system might only be second best, but there is no room for a new dogmatic discussion which is not based on facts but emotions."»...
Source: http://www.epo.org | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«New head of the European Patent Office (EPO), Alison Brimelow, has signalled her intentions early, calling a public meeting to discuss the policy vacuum left by the rejection of the Directive on Computer Implemented Inventions. Purists will argue that there is no such vacuum, of course, because a treaty drawn up in the '70s says there should be no patents granted on computer programs "as such". But it is true that today, computer technology is a far more important part of our lives, economically and otherwise, than it was when the European patent convention was drawn up in 1972. And it is much more diverse in nature. Click here to find out more! Does the 1972 convention deal adequately with how best to offer protection to inventors working in this highly technical field? It is an important question, and not really one that as been properly answered. Legislation is a living thing, and needs constant revision if it is to accurately reflect the needs of the societies it serves. Even though the European Parliament rejected the CII directive, that doesn't mean the status quo is OK. It just means that the CII directive was not the right update. Brimelow says: "The task now is to make sure that the patents that we grant are relevant. What we need is not more patents, but more good patents. This will enable the EPO to remain a confident and competent organisation which can continue to set the global benchmark in patenting."»...
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«David Kline left a comment regarding my blog on Intellectual Dishonesty. The ideas that David promotes in his comments deserve a little more exploration and I'd like to attempt to answer his question as well as invite others to do so. There are a few points that David makes to which I'll respond and then I'll touch on his invitation to show "...¦any evidence at all...¦" that supports the view that the patent system is being used to stifle innovation. First, the comment that "Microsoft has NEVER unilaterally sued another company for patent infringement in federal court. Never. Not once." deserves a little exploration. It is not necessary for Microsoft to sue anyone in order to have a chilling effect on their competitors and innovation. The patent business has evolved to a point that it is far more efficient to threaten to sue than it is to sue. If one sues then one has to prove the validity of the patent as well as infringement. If one threatens to sue then one only has to negotiate. The business model of intellectual property negotiation is well-founded. The first parties who agree to pony up the dollars typically get the best deal. This is because the first ones to acquiesce are used as an example to convince others to fall in line.»...
Source: http://weblog.infoworld.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Representatives of three of the U.S.'s best-known blue chip companies gathered on Capitol Hill on Friday to debate what is quickly becoming one of the most watched legislative issues in the 110th Congress. At a seminar hosted by right-of-center think tank the Progress and Freedom Foundation, senior lawyers with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) were all in agreement that it seems increasingly likely that Congress will pass some form of reform to the country's patent laws. But there the agreement ended. In what has become seen as a fight between high-tech and financial-services companies on one side and pharmaceutical and biotech companies on the other, the panel members expressed their hopes, and doubts, about lawmakers' effort to modernize the patent laws. Andy Culbert, Microsoft's associate general counsel, cautioned that the proposed reform of the patent laws wouldn't lead to havoc as some opponents have predicted. "We are seeing a lot of rhetoric around patent reform legislation," said Culbert. "I would caution people to take that rhetoric with a degree of salt." High-tech companies such as Microsoft have strongly advocated patent reform, arguing that the current system wasn't designed with the rapidly evolving information technology age in mind. At the other side of the spectrum are biotech and pharmaceutical companies, which rely heavily on patent protection for their intellectual property in order to generate the bulk of their profits.»...
Source: http://money.cnn.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Two years ago, the European Parliament (EP) rejected the directive proposed by the European Commission on the patenting of so-called computer-implemented inventions. The number of patent applications relating to computers, telecommunications and electronic media - the product areas with which most of these inventions are associated - continues to grow. So does the number of grant procedures handled by national patent offices and the EPO and, as a consequence, the number of appeals before national courts and the technical boards of appeal. Since the directive was rejected, some of these cases have also led to public discussion about where we go from here. This is the background to the EPO's conference, which it hopes will contribute to an informed debate on the issue. What has happened in patenting practice since July 2005? How have the EPO's practice and case law evolved? In what ways are users of the system affected by the absence of the directive? What about the concerns over patent quality voiced by critics and users alike?»...
Source: http://www.epo.org | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«I watched Microsoft as a leading-edge company make has-beens out of those who couldn't keep up with its frenetic pace of Windows development. WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 spring to mind. Now Microsoft, a little longer in the tooth itself, has found a way to make has-beens out of a new set of companies -- those that agree to pay Microsoft royalties on open source code. There are several trends counter to software patents retaining force -- the recent Supreme Court decision indicating weak standards have been used in granting patents and the Bush administration's belated agreement on the point, to name just two. For Microsoft's patents to have any value in an aggressive sense, Microsoft must use all its wiles to generate belief in their potential, not their actual, force.» [...] «There are several trends counter to software patents retaining force -- the recent Supreme Court decision indicating weak standards have been used in granting patents and the Bush administration's belated agreement on the point, to name just two. For Microsoft's patents to have any value in an aggressive sense, Microsoft must use all its wiles to generate belief in their potential, not their actual, force. »...
Source: http://www.informationweek.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«By KATIE WEEKS San Diego Business Journal Staff While large pharmaceutical companies have been the industry mouthpiece about controversial patent reforms, local legal experts say it's actually small biotech companies ...” which make up most of the sector in San Diego ...” whose value is most affected by their patents. Companies with approved products have a steady income, whereas startup biotechs rely on venture capitalists who are hoping for a big payoff down the road. Investors look to the strength of company patents as an indicator of just how big that payoff might be. A number of changes to the current patent system, on which the life sciences industry relies heavily, are being debated in Congress under the Patent Reform Act of 2007. "The patent reform legislation hasn't really penetrated the consciousness of local companies," said David Doyle, a San Diego-based partner with Morrison & Foerster LLP, who focuses on patent litigation and licensing for the pharmaceutical industry. And it's no wonder. Even local patent experts admit the proposals, coupled with a recent Supreme Court decision about patents, are enough to make one's head spin.»...
Source: http://www.sdbj.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«U.S. hopes public commentary will improve software patents and cut litigation costs. June 13, 2007 By Marie Alpman The U.S. government on Friday will for the first time ask the public to comment on software patent applications, a move it believes will improve the quality of intellectual property protection and reduce costly legal disputes. The move is part of a one-year pilot program by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which hopes to take advantage of the power of social networking to improve the quality of reference material available to the agency when it weighs the merits of complex software patent applications. The quality of U.S. software patents has been questioned by many observers. A key concern is that patent examiners lack the time to check outside sources...”such as a piece of published software, a product manual or even a blog post...”before ruling on a patent application. "We think there are hundreds of millions of dollars that are wasted every year on litigation or licensing negotiations related to patents that are invalid", said Manny Schecter, associate general counsel at IBM, one of 13 companies participating in the project. "We created this project to prevent the issuance of patents that don't merit it."»...
Source: http://www.redherring.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«The right to remove digital rights management controls and patent protection for free and open-source software users is an important provision in the General Public License version 3, said the Free Software Foundation. In a statement last week, Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which authored the General Public License (GPL), said GPLv3 will allow users to remove digital rights management (DRM) controls in appliances that include GPL-covered software. The fourth and last draft of GPLv3 was released last Thursday, with the final version due on 29 June. Stallman noted that hardware manufacturers take advantage of the freedom that free software provides, but they don't allow users to do likewise. "GPLv3 ensures you are free to remove the handcuffs," Stallman said. "It doesn't forbid DRM, or any kind of feature. It places no limits on the substantive functionality you can add to a program, or remove from it. Rather, it makes sure that you are just as free to remove nasty features as the distributor of your copy was to add them." Another threat that GPLv3 resists is that of patent deals like the one between Novell and Microsoft, Stallman said. "Microsoft wants to use its thousands of patents to make GNU/Linux users pay Microsoft for the privilege, and made this deal to try to get that. The deal offers Novell's customers rather limited protection from Microsoft patents," he said, adding that GPLv3 is designed to extend that limited patent protection to the whole community.»...
Source: http://www.zdnet.com.au | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Réglementation - La dernière ébauche de la licence GPL 3 inquiète l'éditeur Novell, au point de prévenir les autorités financières américaines des risques pesant sur son activité. En l'état, elle invalide en partie son accord avec Microsoft, avec des dispositions juridiques strictes. La future version 3 de la licence GPL, qui régit et protège les logiciels libres, pourrait-elle nuire au pacte de non-agression signé entre Novell et Microsoft? Ce sont les craintes exprimées par Novell, dans un document comptable rendu à la Commission américaine des opérations boursières (SEC). Ce document de 144 pages contient des données confidentielles relatives aux activités, brevets et accords technologiques concernés par l'accord entre les deux éditeurs, signé en novembre 2006.»...
Source: http://www.zdnet.fr | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«La Linux Foundation se déclare prête à soutenir les développeurs de solutions basées sur le système libre au code source ouvert menacés d'une action en justice pour violation de brevets, Microsoft en ligne de mire. Mi-mai, l'éditeur américain a affirmé que les logiciels libres et open source bafouent 235 brevets détenus par ses soins. Dans une tribune publiée le 25 mai 2007 par Business Week, Jim Zemlin, directeur de la Linux Foundation, a déclaré ne pas être dupe des motivations du numéro un mondial du logiciel propriétaire. « Cette affaire ne concerne pas vraiment les brevets, mais un acteur du logiciel qui cherche à protéger sa position privilégiée », a souligné Zemlin. « Une guerre autour des brevets n'offre qu'une seule certitude : Le consommateur est perdant. Les consommateurs veulent du choix et de l'innovation. C'est la raison de l'engouement pour l'open source », a poursuivi le dirigeant de la Linux Foundation. Avant d'ajouter : « Microsoft devrait adopter l'open source pour renforcer la concurrence sur le marché. La concurrence est profitable à tous, y compris Microsoft ».»...
Source: http://www.neteco.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«The company that last year notoriously partnered with Microsoft to form a covenant that protects its customers from being sued for copyright violations, today announced it's partnering with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a three-year-old effort to challenge the validity of patents for relatively ubiquitous technologies. Novell said today it will contribute humanpower and resources to the EFF's lobbying efforts for legislative reform, though it did not specifically tie itself to the Patent Reform Act currently being debated in both houses of the US Congress. In a statement likely to be quoted and repeated everywhere in coming days, Novell CTO Nat Friedman said today, "Today's announcement is a logical next step for Novell in its efforts to make patents a non-issue for the software community. Under the current patent system, without a willingness by all companies to share their patents freely, software patents hobble open standards and interoperability, impede innovation and progress, threaten the development of free and open source software, and have a chilling effect on software development. Our partnership with the EFF is about creating a world where software developers and users do not to have to worry about the negative consequences of patents."»...
Source: http://www.betanews.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«En exemptant de sanctions le géant Microsoft, la Cour suprême américaine fait jurisprudence autour d' un important vide juridique. Désormais les logiciels américains vendus à l'étranger sont à l'abri de la justice US en cas de violation de brevets Publicité Lundi 30 mai, la justice américaine a donné son verdict sur l'affaire opposant AT&T à Microsoft. Bilan : elle se refuse à condamner le géant de Redmond, car la loi américaine sur les brevets ne s'applique que pour les produits vendus sur le sol américain... Rappelons qu'AT&T accuse Microsoft d'avoir intégré à Windows sa technologie de reconnaissance vocale. Le géant des télécoms vient de perdre une importante bataille, la plus haute juridiction du pays, en appel, ayant déclaré ne pas être concernée par l'affaire. Raison invoquée : les OS contenant cette solution de reconnaissance vocale d'AT&T ont tous été vendus hors du territoire. Or, selon les juges, la loi sur les brevets ne s'applique que dans le pays.»...
Source: http://silicon.fr | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«D'après la branche française de la Foundation for Free Information and Infrastructure ( FFII ), Nicolas Sarkozy serait, en matière de brevets logiciels, incompétent, dangereux et proche de la position de Microsoft. FFII Le 20 avril, soit deux jours avant le premier tour des élections présidentielles, le candidat de l'UMP envoyait sa réponse au questionnaire de candidats.fr - voir notre actualité - mais n'a pas répondu aux attentes. Selon le communiqué officiel de la FFII, Nicolas Sarkozy est de tous les prétendants " celui qui maitrise le moins ce dossier " sur les brevets logiciels.»...
Source: http://www.generation-nt.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Incontournable enfin avec Michel Rocard: le dossier des logiciels libres et de la brevetabilité des logiciels. Selon lui, le prochain gouvernement devra «agir au niveau des instances nationales, européennes et internationales, pour que soit refusée de façon explicite la brevetabilité des logiciels et méthodes intellectuelles». Dernier point, le rapport souligne l'importance de l'interopérabilité, dont la reconnaissance devra se faire explicitement non seulement dans la loi française, mais aussi dans un cadre européen, par le biais d'une directive.»...
Source: http://www.zdnet.fr | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«USPTO Rejects Human Stem Cell Patents at Behest of Consumer Groups Special to ag-IP-news Agency SANTA MONICA, CA - The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has upheld challenges by consumer advocates to three over-reaching patents on human embryonic stem cells and rejected patent claims by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), according to the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR). "This is a great day for scientific research," said John M. Simpson. FTCR stem cell project director. "Given the facts, this is the only conclusion the USPTO could have reached. The patents should never have been issued in the first place."»...
Source: http://www.ag-ip-news.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«La Commission européenne a défini, sous forme d'une communication, sa vision de la voie à suivre pour améliorer le système des brevets en Europe et pour relancer le débat sur cette question. Faire du brevet communautaire une réalité et améliorer le système actuel de règlement des litiges en matière de brevets devrait, avec les mesures d'accompagnement, rendre le système des brevets plus accessibles et faire baisser les couts pour tous. Le membre de la Commission chargé du marché intérieur et des services, M. Charlie McCreevy, a déclaré: "Les brevets jouent un rôle moteur dans la promotion de l'innovation, la croissance et la compétitivité, mais le marché unique des brevets n'est pas encore achevé. La consultation des parties prenantes que nous avons réalisé en 2006 a révélé que l'UE doit absolument faire aboutir son action, en particulier en ce qui concerne le brevet communautaire et les arrangements relatifs au règlement des litiges, car dans l'économie mondiale de plus en plus concurrentielle d'aujourd'hui, l'Europe ne peut pas se permettre de perdre du terrain dans un domaine aussi crucial que la politique des brevets. C'est pourquoi je propose de réexaminer les différentes options possibles et de travailler avec le Conseil et le Parlement en vue d'un consensus politique sur une amélioration réelle du système des brevets."»...
Source: http://europa.eu | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«In discussing patents, when push comes to shove, defenders of the patent system will often trot out the fact that the real purpose of the patent system isn't necessarily about putting in place incentives for innovation (even if that's what the Constitution clearly states), but to encourage "disclosure." Sometimes when people start to focus too narrowly on the evidence that patents actually don't help increase innovation, but often slow it down, defenders try to shift the focus and claim that it really is all about disclosure. Often this is accompanied by claims stating that without the patent system many great ideas would never be understood for future generations. There's a simple response to that, which is discussed in David Levine and Michele Boldrin's Against Intellectual Monopoly book. If there's economic benefit to keeping an idea secret, and the creator of that idea knows that he or she can keep it secret for greater than the length of the patent, then there's still no incentive to disclose. They'll simply keep the idea as a secret, because the economic benefit of it being a trade secret is much greater than the value of the patent.»...
Source: http://www.techdirt.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«The European Patent Office (EPO) has refused to review the rules on software patents, despite calls from the UK's Court of Appeal for clear guidance on the controversial issue. Advert: Free OUT-LAW breakfast seminars, Protecting your name on the net; and Overseas transfers of personal dataIn a landmark case in which a system was denied a patent on the grounds that it was software, Court of Appeal judge Lord Justice Jacob asked the EPO to issue a definitive statement on software patents. He said that several EPO rulings contradicted each other. EPO President Professor Alain Pompidou has written to Jacob and the UK Patent Office saying that there is an "insufficient legal basis" for a review by the Enlarged Board of Appeal. The issue centres on Article 52 of the European Patent Convention, which lists the kinds of inventions which cannot be granted patents. "The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions," it says. "Discoveries, scientific theories and mathem! atical methods; aesthetic creations; schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers; presentations of information." Jacob said, in his Macrossan ruling, that the application of these exemptions by the EPO's Boards of Appeal had been inconsistent. "The decisions of the EPO Boards of Appeal are mutually contradictory.»...
Source: http://www.out-law.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«My rant on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's latest FUD attack on Google is only a sideshow to the main event, which is Ballmer's unremitting logorrhea about Linux. The Linux community is fighting back with efforts like Bryan Peters' Show Us the Code Web site, but it's going to take more than that to get Microsoft to put its intellectual property where its mouth is. And while Ballmer is wildly misusing patents in his attack, an interesting proposal for a change in granting patents could be what shuts him up. Peters is a Linux fanboy who used his site to post an "Open Letter to Steven Ballmer" calling on the Microsoft CEO to provide specifics to back up his threats against the Linux community: "The request is simple, since you, Microsoft, claim to be so sure of yourself: Show Us the Code. Show us the Code and Show Us the Patents. Let's make this crystal clear.» [...] «"The patent office cannot simply rely on its own experts - there are too many applications. It must rely on the integrity of the attorneys, and those applicants filing "pro se".An idea I think that might go a long way toward patent reform is to institute a "three strikes" policy. If an attorney submits three patent applications that are later invalidated, their certification as a patent attorney should be revoked. If a company submits three patent applications that are later invalidated, then that company should not only be barred from future submissions, but any patents it currently holds should be placed in the public domain. The same should go for any inventor. »...
Source: http://www.informationweek.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Suite au développement de son commerce extérieur et au renforcement de sa puissance technologique, le nombre de demandes de brevets internationaux d'invention formulées et présentées par la Chine, à travers « Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) » (La Chine a adhéré le 1er janvier 1994 à ce Traité international qui a été instauré en 1970 et entré en vigueur officiellement en 1978, et est devenue par la suite son membre titulaire), a toujours augmenté dans de fortes proportions ces dernières années. Pour la seule année 2006, ce genre de demandes exprimées par la Chine se chiffrait à 3.910 cas, soit environ le quintuple de l'année 2000 et s'était élevé au huitième rang mondial. Au cours des six années écoulées, son rythme de croissance annuelle dans ce domaine a atteint 30,7%, soit un rythme de croissance le plus rapide du monde.»...
Source: http://french.people.com.cn | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«The UK reinforced its opposition to software patents yesterday after the High Court rejected an appeal from news agency Bloomberg against the UK Patent Office, which had refused to grant a patent for the company's system of conveying financial information. Justice Pumfrey upheld the Patent Office's decision that the Bloomberg program - which distributes financial data records to users working on different platforms by identifying the application the intended recipient is working on and delivering the data in the appropriate format - is pure software and therefore ineligible for a UK patent. Anti-software patent activists are likely to welcome the move as further evidence of the UK's increasingly strict stance on software patents, which they claim would stifle innovation and ultimately drive up software costs. John Collins, a partner at patent and trade mark attorneys Marks & Clerk, said that despite pure software patents being granted in the UK in the past this latest rulin! g appeared to confirm that an inventive hardware element must be involved for a company to obtain a patent on a computer-based invention. However, he warned that such a stance could damage UK competitiveness because the country is now granting fewer patents for computer-based applications than the rest of Europe. "The less permissive approach by the UK examiners and courts represents a disincentive for British firms to develop technical solutions," he said. "Time and effort is unlikely to be wasted developing technology, such as Bloomberg's new data delivery system, if it can be copied immediately by all and sundry in the UK."»...
Source: http://www.itweek.co.uk | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«from the protectionism-at-work dept Thursday morning, I noticed an odd opinion piece at News.com by Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, celebrating patent law, despite the fact that the company had just been dealt a $1.5 billion setback in a patent dispute. I'd been noodling over what to write about it, because the most amusing thing was that he completely ignored the fact that Microsoft had only picked up the patent obsession recently -- and in its earlier years had been against patents. If anything, it reminded me that we keep seeing stories of young innovative companies who don't use patents, but who only become patent system fans when they have large established markets they want to protect from innovative competitors. In other words, when they're young, they compete by innovating. As they mature, they block the competition using protectionist patents -- which is exactly the opposite of the type of actions the patent system is supposed to encourage.» [...] «Either way, Tim Lee has done an excellent job highlighting Bill Gate's very prescient prediction on software patents juxtaposed with Brad Smith's claims on the importance of the patent system: Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel, 2007: "Protection for software patents and other intellectual property is essential to maintaining the incentives that encourage and underwrite technological breakthroughs. In every industry, patents provide the legal foundation for innovation. The ensuing legal disputes may be messy, but protection is no less necessary, even so." Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, 1991: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today... A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose." »...
Source: http://www.techdirt.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«The government is about to start opening up the process of reviewing patents to the modern font of wisdom: the Internet. The Patent and Trademark Office is starting a pilot project that will not only post patent applications on the Web and invite comments but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file, for serious consideration by the agency's examiners. A first for the federal government, the system resembles the one used by Wikipedia, the popular user-created online encyclopedia. "For the first time in history, it allows the patent-office examiners to open up their cubicles and get access to a whole world of technical experts," said David J. Kappos, vice president and assistant general counsel at IBM.»...
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Downing Street responds to e-petition Ian Williams, vnunet.com, 01 Mar 2007 The UK government has responded to an e-petition asking for software patents to be "clearly unenforceable", agreeing with the stand of the petitioners. The petition claimed that software patents are "used by convicted monopolists to threaten customers who consider using rival software. As a result, patents stifle innovation." The Prime Minister's office said in its response: "The government remains committed to its policy that no patents should exist for inventions which make advances lying solely in the field of software. "Although certain jurisdictions, such as the US, allow more liberal patenting of software-based inventions, these patents cannot be enforced in the UK." Some critics consider the response to be only lip service, however, as it gives no indication of how the government will deal with what the petition calls a patent office that "grants software patents against the letter and the sp! irit of the law ...¦ by pretending that there is a difference between software and 'computer implemented inventions'".»...
Source: http://www.itweek.co.uk | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Analysis: The Supreme Court this week had a chance to dig deeper into the issue of software patents as it resided over oral arguments in the patent case between Microsoft and AT&T. The companies went before the high court with a relatively straightforward dispute: Is Microsoft violating U.S. patent law by sending master copies of Windows to foreign manufacturers for replication on computers made outside the United States? Whether Windows is copyrighted or patented is simply not germane to the case. But that didn't prevent the justices from asking whether software can be patented -- even though they're not ruling on it here. Certain facts in the case are beyond dispute. The Windows code contains speech coding and decoding technology patented by AT&T. Microsoft pays royalties to AT&T for all U.S. copies of Windows. Microsoft also ships the Windows object code -- complete with the AT&T speech technology -- to foreign companies. The code is then copied and installed on computer! s assembled and sold overseas, beyond the reach of U.S. patent laws. Microsoft pays no royalties to AT&T on those copies of Windows.»...
Source: http://www.internetnews.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Microsoft plans to withdraw an attempt to patent technology already used in a free Java programming project called BlueJ, the company said Sunday. BlueJ creator Michael Kölling complained of a Microsoft patent application on Friday on his blog. By Sunday, Dan Fernandez, lead product manager of Microsoft's Visual Studio Express, apologized and said the company is changing course. "We can officially say that the patent application was a mistake and one that should not have happened. To fix this, Microsoft will be removing the patent application in question," Fernandez said on his blog. Kölling said Monday that he's mollified by Microsoft's new position. "Some helpful and reasonable individuals within Microsoft have set the machinery in motion to put things right, and that's a good thing," he said. But the experience has heightened his concerns about software patents, Kölling said in the interview. "I think software patents are currently granted for things that are much too tr! ivial," he said. "Employees are very much encouraged to file a patent for every single thing they do. I believe that there is a culture that says that they should file a patent in any case, even if they think that it may not be justified, on the pure chance that it may get through."»...
Source: http://news.zdnet.com | Source Status

«Free Software guru Richard Stallman's version 3.0 of the GNU General Public License, due this spring, addresses software patents and the restrictions of digital rights management. By Stacy Cowley CRN janv. 24, 2007 02:30 PM For 15 years, the current version of the GNU General Public License (GPL) has remained untouched. One of the oldest, most widely used open-source licenses, the GPL is a foundational text and an ideological marker. When Sun Microsystems wanted to park Java in the open-source mainstream, it opted for GPL licensing, earning the company instant street credibility Yet this spring, the GPL's author will release a controversial new version of the license, a move that's already sending tremors along the software industry's fault lines. "It's almost like an iceberg waiting. There's been so much less awareness and discussion than I would have expected, given the likely implications of the new license," said Bernard Golden, CEO of Navica, a San Carlos, Calif., solu! tions provider that specializes in open-source projects and strategy. While a heated debate about GPL 3 has raged for more than a year among hard-core open-source enthusiasts, the tempest hasn't attracted mass attention. That will change in March, when the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is slated to release a final version of the new GPL. Once GPL 3 becomes official, it will cover all subsequent code issued by the FSF, which oversees the GNU operating system components that are an essential part of all Linux distributions. As GNU and other projects migrate to GPL 3, the new license has the potential to strengthen the free- and open-source community or deepen its divisions.»...
Source: http://www.informationweek.com | Source Status

«PROFESSOR Robert Merges, (Law, Berkeley) has called the patent scene in the US as an Alice in Wonderland situation, where its patents office believes, like the Red Queen, six impossible patents before breakfast. On December 20, 2006, the US and India have signed a memorandum of understanding by which the US Patent Office will now teach how the Indian Patent office can also follow the US into this Wonderland Patentscape. No wonder the press release issued by the US Patents Office calls it a “historic agreement”. Having failed last year to change the Indian patent system through appropriate amendments, the Indian Patent Act is now to be subverted by using standards and procedures that has made the US patents system one of the most dysfunctional in the world. For the uninitiated, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is another US institution, which has done well for the US. Every year, it grants about 200,000 patents. Yet, in the last few years, the criticism ! of USPTO and the current patenting system has been mounting, with USPTO being held responsible for holding back progress from biotechnology to software. And it is not the radical critics alone who have spoken out against the US existing patenting system but traditional supporters of the US establishment, the well-known business magazine such as Fortune, premiere technical journal IEEE Spectrum and even the National Academy of Sciences.» [...] «By agreeing to allow the USPTO to teach the Indian Patent Office how to look to patents, what is being proposed is to subvert the Indian Patent Act by interpretations, which would be quite different from the intention of the Act. Before people think that this could not possibly happen, a look at the US law itself and how the interpretation has been changed to make what was originally not patentable to be patentable would be worthwhile. It is not the law that changed in the US but the philosophy of the Patent Office and the US Jurisprudence on patents. »...
Source: http://pd.cpim.org | Source Status

«An open source advocacy group has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a Microsoft Corp. case asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate all software patents. The New York-based Software Freedom Law Center's (SFLC) amicus brief was submitted earlier this month in Microsoft v. AT&T , which is scheduled for argument before the high court in February. In the case of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and AT&T (NYSE:T), the Supreme Court will decide whether U.S. patents can apply to software that is copied and distributed overseas. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- a patent court that has a history of allowing patents on software and business methods -- first decided in favor of AT&T, expanding the international reach of U.S. software patents. On Microsoft's appeal, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.»...
Source: http://sanjose.bizjournals.com | Source Status

«Attaqué en octobre par le groupe informatique pour violation de propriété intellectuelle, Amazon réplique par des accusations similaires. Et dénonce, au passage, le système des brevets américain dont il a pourtant pleinement bénéficié. Amazon contre-attaque. La société de commerce en ligne a déposé plainte contre IBM pour violation de propriété intellectuelle devant un tribunal du Texas. En octobre, le groupe informatique avait ouvert les hostilités devant le même tribunal, en accusant le site d'e-commerce d'enfreindre plusieurs de ses brevets. IBM vise notamment des technologies qui permettent de commander des produits à partir d'un catalogue électronique, et de proposer des liens et des recommandations personnalisées aux visiteurs du site. Cette affaire met une nouvelle fois en lumière les paradoxes du système des brevets à l'américaine: les revendications d'IBM «reviennent à dire que le groupe a inventé l'internet», plaident les avocats d'Amazon dans les documents transm! is au tribunal. «Si l'on en croit IBM, non seulement Amazon, mais toute personne ayant une activité de commerce électronique sur le web doit payer [lui] des droits».»...
Source: http://www.zdnet.fr | Source Status

«BRUSSELS: When Bill Gates visits Brussels on Thursday to speak with government officials, software developers and customers, he plans to wade into one of Europe's longest-running, most fruitless debates: the pursuit of a unified patent system. Gates, chairman of Microsoft, wants a simple system that will allow the world's largest software maker and other companies to protect their intellectual property in the European Union - and profit from licensing their patents. Such a legal landscape already exists in the United States and Japan.» [...] «In October, the European Parliament passed a resolution criticizing the existing system and urging that a solution be found, but it did not recommend how to solve the problems. The same Parliament overwhelming rejected legislation in July 2005 to legalize software patents in the European Union. »...
Source: http://www.iht.com | Source Status

«An organisation that opposes software patents has awarded Siemens its highest 'honour', for a patent granting the company sole rights over business mobile data usage. Nosoftwarepatents, a German campaign group, gave Siemens the Software Patent of the Year 2006 award on Tuesday. The patent, number EP0836787 , is entitled: "Method of transmitting data packets according to a packet data service in a cellular mobile radio network provided for voice and data-transmission". It was granted by the European Patent Office in 2004, eight years after Siemens applied. Nosoftwarepatents had already named it Software Patent of July earlier this year. The granting of the patent technically means that Siemens can claim a royalty every time data packets are exchanged between a mobile client and a server via a cellular network. This would encompass everything from using a mobile phone as a modem to surfing the mobile internet, sending email from a phone or even using SMS.»...
Source: http://news.zdnet.co.uk | Source Status

«Paul Van den Bulck, " Le projet d’Accord sur le règlement des litiges en matière de brevets : un sujet qui fâche l’OEB et l’UE ", http://www.droit-technologie.org , 2 Novembre 2006 12 octobre 2006 : session plénière du Parlement européen. Au programme, un sujet controversé : la future politique des brevets en Europe. Le sujet provoque en effet quelques polémiques, entre autres et surtout concernant l’épineuse question des brevets logiciels. Il semble d’ailleurs que sur ce point, l’Organisation Européenne des Brevets et l’Union européenne se livrent, depuis quelques temps déjà, une guerre sans relâche. C’est dire l’impatience avec laquelle l’issue de la discussion parlementaire du 12 octobre dernier était attendue. Son enjeu se résumait en 4 lettres : EPLA, pour désigner le « European Patent Litigation Agreement ». Centre de toutes les attentions, l’Accord sur le règlement des litiges en matière de brevets européens inquiète les nombreux opposants à la brevetabilité des logi! ciels. Car, en effet, la conclusion de cet accord pourrait avoir pour conséquence de permettre l’attribution de « brevets logiciels ». Rappelons ici qu’en juillet 2005, le Parlement européen avait déjà eu l’occasion de se prononcer sur la question et avait alors rejeté en bloc une proposition de directive, émanant du Conseil et relative à la brevetabilité des « inventions mises en œuvre par ordinateur ». L’histoire aurait été trop belle si elle s’était terminée ainsi, mais c’était sans compter le vent contraire qui souffle du côté de l’OEB, favorable à l’attribution de brevets logiciels.»...
Source: http://www.droit-technologie.org | Source Status

«BEIJING, Nov. 1 (Xinhuanet) -- American companies General Electric, IBM,, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have joined with the New York Law School and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to inaugarate a new system of peer review for software patents. The four companies, plus Red Hat, the world's biggest listed open source software business, are the lead sponsors behind the Community Patent Review project. The one-year pilot program will begin in early 2007 and focus on published but not-yet-granted patent applications relating to computer software. Scientists and engineers will be able to submit prior art to patent examiners at the USPTO using an online system. All Community Patent review project documents will be available on the internet for public comment.» [...] « Ehrlich said that officials in other IP offices, including the EPO and JPO, will be watching the initiative closely. »...
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com | Source Status

«The Court of Appeal in London has taken the unprecedented step of recommending that the EPO Enlarged Board consider a series of questions relating to the patentability of software and business methods in its eagerly awaited ruling in the Macrossan case. Patent attorneys and their clients hoping that the Court would give a judicial green light for the UK patent authorities to take a more liberal approach when assessing business method and software patents will be disappointed by the ruling , handed down on Friday.» [...] «The three judges, Lord Justice Chadwick, Lord Justice Jacob and Lord Justice Neuberger, backed a decision by the UK Patent Office to refuse to grant Australian entrepreneur and solicitor Neal Macrossan a patent for a computer-based system he designed to help people complete the forms required to register a company. But they recommended the European patent-granting authority consider the issue to provide additional clarification. »...
Source: http://www.managingip.com | Source Status

«A handful of leading technology companies will soon submit some of their patent applications for "open peer review" under a pilot project at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. General Electric Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., and Red Hat Inc., are the lead financial sponsors of the "community patent review" initiative and will allow some of their patent applications to be reviewed by the public, said Rick Anderson, a spokesman for the project.»...
Source: http://www.businessweek.com | Source Status

«Software companies should stop protecting those old innovations and look forward to the new, writes Gary Barker. GARY BARNETT is no fan of the industry that has grown up around software patents. The newest addition to UK research company Ovum's stable of brainiacs, Mr Barnett says such patents inhibit innovation and are used as "lottery tickets" - they should either go or be severely limited. Over the decades, lawyers grew fat from running lawsuits brought mainly by US software companies alleging infringement of their patents, he says. Mr Barnett says "subscription" is the way to inspire the economic growth the online world needs. Open source is compelling for customers because companies such as Red Hat depend on subscriptions for their livelihood and future innovation, he says. "Because it is a subscription model you can stop paying them and pay someone else, if you think you will get a better result," Mr Barnett says. But where a company such as Microsoft sells a licence ! to use its products, a buyer is paying for past innovation.»...
Source: http://www.theage.com.au | Source Status

«IBM has launched an initiative to open the discussion of US patent reform, as the system struggles under a growing mountain of applications. Big Blue is the biggest register of non-Federal patent in the US. The firm filed 2,941 successful utility patents in 2005, making it the largest commercial applicant for the 13th consecutive year, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The latest move follows ongoing criticism of the patent system. Prime among the offenders are so-called "patent trolls", companies which enforce their rights against alleged infringers, often settling out of court for large sums while never intending to use these patents in products or services.»...
Source: http://www.vnunet.com | Source Status

«I HAVE always thought that the policy discourse on intellectual property (IP) law in Singapore was dominated by rights owners, to the near-exclusion of other stakeholders. So it was gladdening to note the Chief Justice's words at a recent legal conference: "We should strive towards the principled development our IP laws so as to continually strike a fair and equitable balance between the interests of all stakeholders in this brave, but wonderful, new world of intellectual property." The Chief Justice cited the example of "patent trolls", entities who acquire extensive patent portfolios for the primary purpose of obtaining licence fees from companies who may potentially infringe the patents. Unfortunately, there are other instances of IP law being used or extended in ways that may not be balanced. For instance, digital content, such as films, music and software, is frequently delivered using digital rights management (DRM) technology. DRM is underpinned by legislative provis! ions that outlaw the circumvention of the technological measures used, with certain limited exceptions. (The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore recently conducted a public consultation on whether to add further exceptions.) But this prohibition is unrelated to the question of whether the intended use of the protected content is permitted. This means that the owner of a digital work can prevent others from using it in ways that the law would otherwise deem appropriate and non-infringing.»...
Source: http://www.todayonline.com | Source Status

«Dans un vote ce jour, le parlement européen recommande à la Commission la prudence dans son approche de l'EPLA, l'Accord sur le règlement des litiges en matière de brevets européens proposé par l'OEB. Certains craignent que ce texte ne puisse ouvrir une porte détournée aux brevets logiciels en Europe. Le parlement européen, qui avait réussi à faire échouer les plan des pro-brevets logiciels en Europe , est reparti en guerre aujourd'hui contre la proposition de la Commission de souscrire à l'Accord sur le règlement des litiges en matière de brevets européens (EPLA ou European Patent Litigation Agreement), un projet avancé et soutenu par l'Office Européen des brevets (OEB).»...
Source: http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr | Source Status

«Dans un vote ce jour, le parlement européen recommande à la Commission la prudence dans son approche de l'EPLA, l'Accord sur le règlement des litiges en matière de brevets européens proposé par l'OEB. Certains craignent que ce texte ne puisse ouvrir une porte détournée aux brevets logiciels en Europe. Le parlement européen, qui avait réussi à faire échouer les plan des pro-brevets logiciels en Europe, est reparti en guerre aujourd'hui contre la proposition de la Commission de souscrire à l'Accord sur le règlement des litiges en matière de brevets européens (EPLA ou European Patent Litigation Agreement), un projet avancé et soutenu par l'Office Européen des brevets (OEB). L'OEB est très critiqué par une partie du Parlement européen pour sa gestion du dossier de la brevetabilité des logiciels. Selon les Verts, le PS et les communistes européens, le nombre de demandes de brevets déposées chaque année à l'Office européen des brevets a augmenté de quelque 60% au cours des sept dernières années. Ceux-ci notent que "ce n'est pas le résultat d'un accroissement correspondant de l'activité innovante et, partant, soulève des préoccupations quant à l'extension du champ des matières susceptibles de faire l'objet d'un brevet, quant aux normes de qualité inférieures, à la création de maquis de brevets, à une utilisation stratégique accrue des brevets en tant que substitution à des innovations réelles". L'une des inquiétudes des parlementaires reste le fait que l'OEB a déjà approuvé des brevets sur le logiciel alors qu'en théorie il n'en a pas le pouvoir. Autant dire que l'EPLA était attendu de pied ferme par lesdits députés, certains y voyant une nouvelle tentative de l'OEB d'ouvrir la porte à la brevetabilité du logiciel en Europe. Pour Alain Pompidou, le président de l'OEB, "la proportion des inventions implémentées au travers de l'informatique va croissante, du fait que l'innovation repose de plus en plus sur les technologies de l'information incorporées dans un nombre croissant d'équipements allant des voitures aux machines à laver en passant par les téléphones mobiles". Il ajoute toutefois que l'OEB n'a pas son propre agenda sur la question des brevets logiciels. En accord avec la convention européenne sur les brevets de 1973, l'OEB ne valide pas de brevets sur les logiciels en soi, mais il en accorde pour les inventions liées à des ordinateurs qui sont nouvelles, inventives et ont un caractère technique".»...
Source: http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«European Patent Organization President Alain Pompidou hit back at criticism of Europe's patent regime from parts of the software industry Tuesday, with assurances that software per se cannot be patented. His comments at an intellectual property conference in Lisbon come as the debate over the future of patents in Europe intensifies. "The relatively high cost of European patents compared with their Japanese and American counterparts can be considered detrimental to the continuing success of the European patent system and to the innovation process in general," Pompidou said in prepared remarks.»...
Source: http://www.itworld.com | Source Status

«La directive sur les brevets logiciels, dont la dernière formule avait été rejetée l'an passée, pourrait faire son retour par le biais d'une proposition d'un Commissaire européen. Différents groupes politiques la critiquent déjà vertement. Une mesure devant être soumise au vote du Parlement européen le 11 ou 12 octobre prochain pourrait bien prendre la relève de la directive avortée sur les brevets logiciels.»...
Source: http://www.zdnet.fr | Source Status

«You operate in a world of intellectual property (IP) rights that protect your innovations and those of your competitors – but you, like much of the UK computing industry, probably overlook these rights, to your considerable detriment. Even staunch US advocates of open source, such as Red Hat , engage in extensive patenting. At the time of publication, Red Hat had 41 published patent applications. Look for yourself using a free online patent search tool to see what your rivals are up to. Try
Source: http://ep.espacenet.com | Source Status and type in Red Hat's name under applicant, or try a few keyword searches in your own areas of expertise. The economic evidence for and against patents in the software sector is by no means conclusive, in contrast to the pharmaceutical sector where the benefit of patents to research is abundant.»...
Source: http://www.whatpc.co.uk | Source Status

«The US Patent and Trademark Office has reported a new record for the number of software patents awarded in a single year. The agency issued 893 new patents on Tuesday alone, pushing the total to 30,232 in 2006 so far. At the current rate of registration, more than 40,000 software patents will be issued this year in the US, according to the Public Patent Foundation . The previous record was set in 2004.»...
Source: http://www.vnunet.com | Source Status

«Anti-software-patent campaigners have warned that US-style software patents could become widespread in Europe after a proposed European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) featuring plans for a new European patent court secured support from the European Commission. Speaking at an informal meeting of the Economic and Finance Council of the European Union (EU) in Finland this month, internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy said he was committed to advancing Community Patent legislation to harmonise patent law across the EU and bringing the current EPLA negotiations to a conclusion.»...
Source: http://www.itweek.co.uk | Source Status

«On March 11, 2003, the U.S. Patent Office came up with the answer to that question when it issued patent 6,530,329 to Matthew Katzer of Portland, Ore. There's something worrisome about that decision. Model railroads work on a scale whose complexity we ought to be able to grasp. If we can't get this case right, what are we going to do when the opportunists flock in to claim patents on nuclear power plant operation and supply chain management? But no, the U.S. Patent Office didn't know anything about "prior art" in model railroad software.»...
Source: http://www.informationweek.com | Source Status

«The opponents of proliferating software patents who see them as a threat to open source software may finally get their day in court--the U.S. Supreme Court. The critics have been itching for this opportunity for years. But the Supreme Court rarely reviews patent cases, which usually are decided by federal appeals courts. The top court, however, has agreed to hear three patent cases this fall, though only one relates to the impact of patents on open source software. The case involves two brake pedal manufacturers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a legal advocacy group, has filed a friend of the court brief in the case of KSR International v. Teleflex. The two parties will be arguing whether Teleflex has patented the right to put electronic sensors on brakes. The EFF has signed on to argue that the U.S. Patent Office's increasingly loose grants of patents is hurting innovation in many fields, such as electronic brake sensors, but that it's particularly worrisome for open ! source code development.»...
Source: http://www.informationweek.com | Source Status

«The success of open source business models will, in the future, lead to changes in the law. The current copyright and patent regimes date from the 1990s, when proprietary business models were at their height and the Internet was in its infancy. This is no accident. Hints of what was to come – the launch of Linux , the World Wide Web , the Free Software Foundation , and the publication of Eric Raymond's classic The Cathedral and the Bazaar , (not to mention such Internet commerce classics as Seth Godin's Permission Marketing ) were showing the way to a future which incumbents were desperate to close off.»...
Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com | Source Status

«The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday to overturn an appeals court patent ruling that could do what Microsoft has so far failed to do: derail the open-source movement. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a controversial test that the technology watchdog group says is far too liberal in granting software patents. In its amicus brief, the EFF charged that the “suggestion testâ€� upheld by the court could bog down the open-source movement in defending itself against bogus patent challenges.»...
Source: http://www.redherring.com

«The debate surrounding Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and the balance between the interests of society and those of the 'inventor' continues unabated. 'Inventor' in practice tends to mean large corporations and while they do not necessarily lead invention, the largest share of patents end up in their portfolios. Lobbying efforts by these corporations to ensure rules on IPR reflect their interests go back to the early 1990s when US business in particular played a major role shaping the IPR regime of the World Trade Organisation (the so-called TRIPs). Software used to be covered by copyright, just like plant varieties used to be covered by plant breeders' rights. In both cases, industry decided it was not enough, despite the fact that the current software giants grew with copyrights. Patents, however, provide a stronger protection than copyrights or plant breeders rights, and therefore mean more profit. In the US, patents were granted on software, and living organisms from the 1980s. In Europe, software and related inventions are in principle not patentable under the European Patent Convention (art. 52 par. (2)(c) and (3)). Yet to date, more than 30,000 software-related patents have been granted by the European Patent Office (EPO). In 2002, Internal Market Commissioner Bolkestein presented the first proposal for an EU directive on the 'patentability of computer-related inventions'. However, the European Parliament and many national parliaments, raised serious objections. There was concern about the objective of the directive and whether it merely harmonises current practice of granting patents in this field (its official intention) or acts to broaden the scope of what is patentable. Contrary to the claims of large software companies it is not clear that such patent rules stimulate innovation. Many smaller companies and software developers argue that the patents rules under discussion would actually cripple innovation.»...
Source: http://www.corporateeurope.org | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels

«Too many patents are just as bad for society as too few. There are those who view the patent system as the seedbed of capitalism--the place where ideas and new technologies are nurtured. This is a romantic myth. In reality, patents are enormously powerful competitive weapons that are proliferating dangerously, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has all the trappings of a revenue-driven, institutionalized arms merchant. My own introduction to the realities of the patent system came in the 1980s, when my client, Sun Microsystems--then a small company--was accused by IBM of patent infringement. Threatening a massive lawsuit, IBM demanded a meeting to present its claims. Fourteen IBM lawyers and their assistants, all clad in the requisite dark blue suits, crowded into the largest conference room Sun had. The chief blue suit orchestrated the presentation of the seven patents IBM claimed were infringed, the most prominent of which was IBM's notorious "fat lines" patent: To turn a thin line on a computer screen into a broad line, you go up and down an equal distance from the ends of the thin line and then connect the four points. You probably learned this technique for turning a line into a rectangle in seventh-grade geometry, and, doubtless, you believe it was devised by Euclid or some such 3,000-year-old thinker. Not according to the examiners of the USPTO, who awarded IBM a patent on the process. After IBM's presentation, our turn came. As the Big Blue crew looked on (without a flicker of emotion), my colleagues--all of whom had both engineering and law degrees--took to the whiteboard with markers, methodically illustrating, dissecting, and demolishing IBM's claims. We used phrases like: "You must be kidding," and "You ought to be ashamed." But the IBM team showed no emotion, save outright indifference. Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would find that Sun's technology infringed even that one. An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. "OK," he 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?" After a modest bit of negotiation, Sun cut IBM a check, and the blue suits went to the next company on their hit list.»...
Source: http://www.forbes.com | Source Status Category: Brevets Logiciels