First reports from the hearing in the High Court: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2007/11/software-patents-at-high-court.html
Some interesting arguments pro-software patents: the "dormant technical effect" thing looks like it might have legs, but is really the same argument as before wrt. technical effects. The EPC 2000 argument - that any decision in the UK might be exported into the rest of Europe - does seem to be really shaky. My reading of EPC 2k 105a-c seems to be about the patent holders being able to limit the claims of their patent centrally, and can only be requested by the patent holder themselves. IP Kat also seems mystified by this. Perhaps there is a really clever technical argument in there, though. The slightly worrying comment is that it seems that this could get referred to the House of Lords. I think that can only happen if the Lords accept the case, and I'm not totally sure why the High Court would refer the case there anyway - you usually can't skip the Court of Appeals unless you're really Speshul. However, it does seem that there is a push for re-examination of this issue somewhat soon. Cheers, Alex. _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
