+++ Adrien CLERC [2014-03-28 12:17 +0100]: > No one in Europe. There's no such thing as software patent here. Yet. I > hope this will stay forever. > (And yes, maybe I'm wrong, but please enlighten me!)
You are wrong. This is a common misconception, amongst geeks, but there are thousands of software patents registered in Europe. It is quite a lot harder to use them agressively than it is in the USA, as we don't have anything quite a dumb as jury trials in East Marshall, but if you follow, for example, the samsung/apple lawsuits round the world or case law on microsoft's FAT patents, you will see some pretty bad stuff has gone on here too. Thinking that this problem is null here is very wrongheaded. It's just significantly less awful than America, which isn't a very high bar to pass. This is quite a good historical summary (depite being by an IP lawyer): http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-mess-that-is-european-software.html And this is info we free software people will find informative: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Software_patents_exist_in_Europe,_mostly Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM http://wookware.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140328121855.gr10...@stoneboat.aleph1.co.uk
