question about software patents (sandisk/sisvel)

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2006-09-05 at 00:18 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> Of course mathematical discoveries like MP3 should not get patent 
> protection, but AIUI from recent Debian threads, Germany is about as 
> software-patent-happy as UK and US.

I'm not sure that's quite true; from my understanding there are certain
types of patents that the German system is more likely to allow, but in
general the levels of "badness" are roughly Germany < UK < EPO < US.

Even recently, the UKPO has been turning down some patents which really
they should have granted on their previous logic.

Going back to MP3: you can view a list of the main patents here:

	http://www.mp3licensing.com/patents/index.html

Most of those are mathematical in nature, and pretty awful, but not all
of them: for example, the patent on psychoacoustic compression (0251028
over here) would likely survive any test that has been used previously
or has been put forward (e.g., the "forces of nature" test that the
Germans previously used), as far as I know (that's not to say that there
hasn't been disagreement about whether or not it was actually novel).

Cheers,

Alex.