[Fedora-legal-list] Legal flag raised on PPSSPP

[Lars Seipel]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 05:21:06PM +0000, Tristan Santore wrote:
> On 11/03/14 17:19, Richard Fontana wrote:
> >On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 05:11:33PM +0000, Tristan Santore wrote:
> >>Fortunately, for us people in Europe, those issues only apply
> >>indirectly.
> >If it makes you feel happy believing that, by all means proceed with
> >that belief.
> >
> >  - RF
> >
> Please elaborate further. ;-}
> 
> I am all ears.

Sadly, Richard's remark is spot-on. That software 'as such` shouldn't be
patentable here in Europe seems like a nice bit of trivia when you
consider how this matter is actually handled in practice.

Germany's Federal Court of Justice(*) upholding Microsoft's patents
on...VFAT is just one of many examples. Apart from that, stuff like
video/audio compression isn't even considered to be in the software
realm. Those are handled as 'process patents' and get granted with
approximately zero regard to issues of software patentability.

Unfortunately, it's really not an US-only problem.

Lars

(*) Bundesgerichtshof, the highest court of appeals for such cases