[Fsfe-ie] New terms for software patents debate?

[Rory Browne]

>
>
>
> This is difficult to ask for since the TRIPS agreement requires that
> patents
> last 20 years.

Perhaps - in which case you play them at their own game. The 2-year software
limitation clause would only affect
software patents, which are disguised as non-software-patents. The patent
itself would be valid for the full 20 years
for non-software implementations.

Alternatively just exempt software-implementations from the get-go.


>
>
> Another problem is that the start of a patents' term of validity is
> back-dated to when the application was made, IIRC.  Because the EPO is so
> overloaded, application processing time is currently measured in years.  So
> a 2-3 year duration might be completely unacceptable to the EPO since it
> would lead to patents that are expired-on-grant (we would have a hard time
> selling this idea to politicians).  This should be fixed, but we might be,
> ah, spraying water against the wind if we try to fix the general the
> problems of the European patent system while trying to fix our specific
> problem.
>

On the other hand, they may welcome such a limitation on patents, since the
patents would
be less valuable, leading to a reduction of applications, thereby easing
their workload. Then
again, maybe the EPO has a different sense of logic to me.


>
> And if the pharma lobby get worried that this idea will spread to other
> domains, we could gain new powerful enemies that we don't need.




>
> --
> Ciarán O'Riordan, +32 477 36 44 19, http://ciaran.compsoc.com/
>
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>
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>
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