On Wednesday 02 June 2004 12:57 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > How about business method patents? It's only a short step from there to > software patents, and if I'm not mistaken it was mainly because the > USPTO started accepting these things that opened the door to patents on > software.
Business method patents are quite abundant especially in the manufacturing segment. It can be arguably applied to software engineering per se, as the production of software can be construed as akin to the manufacturing process. I'm not sure though how would our laws qualify software engineering as manufacturing, as software itself is intangible, infinitely replicable and amortizable, unlike the commonly-qualified nature of manufacturing - which clearly involves the production of a physical, tangible material. I'm not much aware on how our laws define such though, as IANAL. Btw, there are quite a lot to watch out on the legal side of IPR, given that there's already an enabling law for patent cooperation - which extends to other countries that ratified the treaty (as the Philippines is already a member of the WIPO since 2001). I guess should software patents be prevalent in this country due to the PCT, we free software engineers would have to constantly consult with our lawyers lest we always find ourselves at odds with IPR infringement. -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
