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.