Compliance Toolkit

Story: Austrian politician joins the anti-patent movement

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We just need more people to see how daft software patents, especially as implemented in America, are.

Would we allow the following in the hardware world?

The blatently basic small idea: Patenting the concept of joining things together using a nut and bolt? Or someone else invents a new glue, so we patent the concept of using it to glue things together.

Covers the problem domain: Patenting the concept of opening a bottle of wine, as opposed to patenting a distinct design of corkscrew?

Locking out competition: A car manufacturer patenting the screwthread used to fit the oil filters in order to block third party spare part manufacturers? Patenting the process by which an oil filter is changed in order to block independent garages?

We've seen blatently obvious software ideas patented - pointer inequality (Not Equals Operator), the double click, Storing a Document as XML (which is a document storage language - Duh!) and a seperate patent claim for using XML tools to process it (like using a hammer to hit a nail - thats what they're designed for)

We've seen patents that cover whole domains - at least two covering the concept of online trading, some covering the concept of music being sent over the internet, even though FTP could do it before.

We see all sorts of attempts to stop competitors implementing compatible software - word processors that can read Word files, file server software that can talk on a Windows network. Patenting the file formats and protocols will completely prevent competition in these important areas and make vendor lockin legally enforceable.

None of the above patents promote innovation. All they do is allow encumbents to stifle competion.

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