PCT (Patents, Copyright, Trademark) policy and Open Source

[Alexander Terekhov]

Heck, I just can't resist. Note that nothing that "I say" here 
represent official opinion or policy of IBM Corp. Just in case. 
I'm speaking for myself only. And I'm developer, not attorney. 
I've contributed some stuff to a few open source projects and I 
also participate in the http://www.opengroup.org/austin as 
"Technical Reviewer" and "Working Group Member"

opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/frontmatter/participants.html

As an individual (being not at work and not part of some 
collaborative product development community [CPL terms are the 
best for it, I believe]), I release the code straight into the 
public domain, for example:

www.terekhov.de/pthread_refcount_t/experimental/refcount.cpp

Rober Osfield wrote:
[...]
> The software patents directive which so far has been turned 
> around at first vote in EP vote back in *September* which 
> ratified that pure software is *not* patentable, as per the 
> 1974 European Patent Convention.

http://www.ipjur.com/2003_09_01_archive.php3

<quote>

The misinformation campaign staged by the Eurolinux Alliance 
is really horrendous. The most abhorrent but nevertheless 
successful tactics instrumentalised by FFII e.V. was the 
allegation repeated again and again that in particular the 
EPO has granted tens of thousands of so-called "software 
patents" (i.e. patents on computer-implemented inventions) 
in contradiction to the law as it is codified by the 
European Patent Convention (EPC). But there is no provision 
in the EPC that would prevent such patents on computer-
implemented inventions. Article 52 of the EPC only bans 
patenting of programs for computers "as such" (whatever 
that precisely might be). Moreover, and most decisive, the 
competent Boards of Appeal of the EPO which enjoy the legal 
independence and status of a court have repeatedly dealt 
with that question, expressively allowing such patents to 
some extent. Hence, a corpus of lawful case law exists 
properly defining the limits of patentability under the 
current regime of the EPC. In turn, the allegations made by 
Eurolinux at least implicitly mean that the officers of the 
EPO would be guilty of perversion of justice. This is 
completely nonsense. The wording of Article 52 EPC is 
indeed somewhat unclear in particular in the paragraphs 2 
and 3, and there is no argument for excluding the current 
status of the EPO case law from the status of legitimate 
interpretation of that codified law by competent judges 
populating the Boards of Appeal.

A very sad fact, however, is that the general public and in 
particular some prominent broadsheet newspapers were taken 
in by that propagandistic disinformation campaign. Contrary 
to the assertions again and again made by Eurolinux, the 
original draft Directive as proposed by the commission never 
intended to "open the floodgates" for "software patents", to 
"legalise" vast numbers of patents already validly issued by 
the EPO, or the like. The truth is that the EU Commission 
only had intended to preserve and codify some "status quo" 
reached by the practice of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO.

</quote>

See also http://www.ipjur.com/episwpat.php3 and etc.

regards,
alexander.

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