Software-Patente   
 

FITUG: Mehr Rechtssicherheit bei Softwarepatenten  
Der Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft (FITUG) setzt sich für mehr Rechtssicherheit bei Softwarepatenten ein. Durch die gegenwärtige Rechtslage bei Softwarepatenten werden Bestand und weitere Entwicklung des Erfolgsmodells freie Software gefährdet, ohne daß dies nötig wäre. Innovations- und Beschäftigungspotentiale bleiben ungenutzt; die Programmierer freier Software werden unkalkulierbaren, ungerechtfertigten, unübersehbar großen und unvermeidbaren Prozeßrisiken ausgesetzt.  
div. Erstunterzeihner  
(München, 1999-12-08) 

Jean-Paul Smets'  freepatents.org 

swpat.ffii.org 

Information des Deutschen Patentamtes zum Schutz von Computerprogrammen   
 

Patente, die die Welt erschüttern 
von Detlef Borchers  
Das Geldverdienen mit möglichst weit gefaßten Software-Patenten ist nicht länger eine reine US-Disziplin. Auch in Europa zündet nun die Patentierungs-Idee - als Schutz der heimischen Software-Industrie. 
ZDNet Deutschland 8/99 

Open-Source-Gemeinde in Aufruhr 
ZVEI fordert Patente auf Software-Erfindungen MÜNCHEN (CW)  
Die Fronten im Streit um die Patentierung von Software in der EU verhärten sich. Der Zentralverband Elektrotechnik- und Elektronikindustrie e.V. (ZVEI) hat jetzt in einem Schreiben an die Kommission das Ende der Diskriminierung von Software gegenüber anderern Erfindungen gefordert. Für den deutschen Linux-Verband Live würden Patente auf Software hingegen den hiesigen Mittelstand schädigen.  
COMPUTERWOCHE Nr. 31 vom 06. August 1999 
 

Streit um Software-Patente hält an 
Widerspruch vom Linux-Verband und Vertretern freier Software  
Gewinner vor allem große Konzerne  Nach Ansicht von Live wäre eine Patentierung ein Schaden für den Standort Deutschland und ein «erstaunliches Plädoyer» gegen die Interessen der mittelständischen deutschen Softwarefirmen. «Die Einführung der Patentierbarkeit von Software-Programmen in Deutschland und Europa würde die Vorherrschaft der amerikanischen Software-Industrie zementieren», erklärte 
Live-Vorstandsmitglied Daniel Riek. Von einer rechtlichen Diskriminierung von Softwareprodukten könne in Deutschland nicht gesprochen werden, erklärte Riek. Das Urheberrecht biete ausreichend Schutz für Softwarefirmen. Die Forderung nach Software-Patentierung entspringe eher dem Wunsch nach Ausschaltung von Wettbewerb, erklärte Live. Für die Entwicklung freier Software wie beispielsweise für das Betriebssystem Linux wäre es eine schwere Behinderung.  Von der gegenwärtigen Rechtsunsicherheit bei den Software-Patenten profitieren 
nach Einschätzung der Computerzeitschrift «c't» vor allem große Firmen, besonders aus den USA und Japan. Kleine Entwickler ohne eigene Rechts- oder Patentabteilungen hätten dagegen das Nachsehen. Laut Patentgesetz seien Computerprogramme als solche keine patentierbaren Erfindungen. In der Praxis werde diese Bestimmung aber seit Jahren ausgehebelt, berichtet «c't», das diesem Thema mehrere Artikel in seiner aktuellen Ausgabe gewidmet hat. 
Dienstag, 3. August 1999, 03:09 Uhr 
Yahoo Deutschland Schlagzeilen 
 
 

Boycott Amazon! 
Richard Stallman, Please do not buy from Amazon  
Amazon has obtained a US patent (5,960,411) on an important and obvious idea for E-commerce: the idea that your command in a web browser to buy a certain item can carry along information about your identity. (This works by sending back a "cookie", a kind of ID code that your browser received previously from the same server.) Amazon has sued to block the use of this simple idea, showing that they truly intend to monopolize it. This is an attack against the World Wide Web and against E-commerce in general.  
     The idea in question is that a company can give you something which you can subsequently show them to identify yourself for credit. This is nothing new: a physical credit card does the same job, after all. But the US Patent Office issues patents on obvious and well-known ideas every day. Sometimes the result is a disaster.  
     Today Amazon is suing one large company. If this were just a dispute between two companies, it would not be an important public issue. But the patent gives Amazon the power over anyone who runs a web site in the US (and any other countries that give them similar patents)--power to control all use of this technique. Although only one company is being sued today, the issue affects the whole Internet.  
     Amazon is not alone at fault in what is happening. The US Patent  Office is to blame for having very low standards, and US courts are to blame for endorsing them. And US patent law is to blame for authorizing patents on computational techniques and patterns of communication--a policy that is harmful in general. (See lpf.ai.mit.edu for more information about this issue.) ... LinuxToday, Dec 13, 1999, 19:48 UTC (145 Talkbacks)

Tim O'Reilly on Amazon's 1-Click Patent, (Jan 2000) 

Tim O'Reilly's Conversation with Jeff Bezos, (March 2, 2000)
 
 

The GIF Story 
Unisys Corporation has patented the LZW (Lempel Ziv Welch) data compression/decompression technology over 10 years. LZW is the base for GIF, TIFF-LZW, PDF-LZW images and other graphical formats. Unisys has recently started demanding license fees from Intranet or Billboard Web site operators who use any LZW-based graphics: a one-time payment of $5,000.00 U.S. for each license agreement (limited to two servers at each licensed Web site). Or a single payment of $7,500 U.S. for a license for both Billboard and Intranet. 

Clarification on Web Site LZW Licenses by Unisys, posted September 2, 1999: 

Burn All GIFs Day: Friday, November 5, 1999 a project of the League for Programming Freedom. 

GIF-Bilder sollen aus dem Web verschwinden (Heise Newsticker, 01.11.99) 

Eine Alternative zu GIF: PNG (Portable Network Graphics) 
 
 

Richard M. Stallman:   
Why Software Should Not Have Owners   
Patent Reform Is Not Enough   
Saving Europe from Software Patents   

THE CHALLENGE OF SOFTWARE-RELATED PATENTS, A Primer on Software-Related Patents and the Software Patent Institute, by David R. Syrowik and Roland J. Cole   

REVIEW OF USPTO HEARINGS IN WASHINGTON ON SOFTWARE PATENTING, Feb 12, 1994, Gregory Aharonian, Internet Patent New Service   

REVIEW OF USPTO HEARINGS IN SAN JOSE ON SOFTWARE PATENTING, Jan 29, 1994, Gregory Aharonian, Internet Patent New Service   

TITLES TO 2700 SOFTWARE PATENTS ISSUED IN 1992 and 1993, Greg Aharonian Internet Patents News Service   
At the end of January, the Patent Office will be holding public hearings in San Jose and Washington on the "problem" of software patents. To help these hearings be more emprical, I have prepared a list of 2700 software patents issued in the past two years  (of which there are over 11,000 to date).   
     1) The most minor of software concepts can be patented.   
     2) Extremely broad software patents can be acquired.   
     3) Hardware and software patents are logically equivalent   
     4) Software patent litigation is not very active   
     5) 25% of all software patents could not survive reexamination   
     6) Software patent examiners are being asked the impossible   

Simson L. Garfinkel, Richard M. Stallman, Mitchell Kapor, Why Patents Are Bad for Software, in: Issues in Science and Technology, Fall 1991:   

Kolloquium Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz im Spannungsfeld neuer Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien 4. und 5. Juni 1998, Proceedings im Volltext, darunter:   
Softwareschutz zwischen Urheberrecht und Patentrecht, Günter Grättinger, Grättinger und Partner Patentanwälte   
und   
Rechtsschutz der Computerprogramme in Rußland und den EU-Ländern, Olga Kusmina, TU Ilmenau   
und   
Patente und Lizenzen, Helge B. Cohausz, Cosearch - Cohausz Hase Recherche GmbH   

Wolfgang Tauchert, Leiter der Patentabteilung 53 (Datenverarbeitung) des Deutschen Patentamts, Programm und Patent - Betrachtungen im Zusammenhang mit dem Technikbegriff, JurPC Web-Dok. 36/1997, Abs. 1 - 61   

SPI - Software Patent Institute and its Database of Software Technologies   
A nonprofit corporation formed to provide courses and prior art about   
software technology to help improve the patent process   
   
IBM Patent Server   

U.S. Patent Act (an der Cornell-Law-School)   

PATON - Patentinformationszentrum und Online-Dienste, TU Ilmenau   

Patentdatenbanken und -informationen, Linkliste von Janine Willms an der Uni Oldenburg   
   

Patent-News 

Mac OS 9 Technology Ignites Infrigment Claims 
(10/25/99, 5:22 p.m. ET) TechWeb 
Imatec on Monday updated an existing trademark infringement lawsuit filed against Apple to include its new Mac OS 9 operating system, which was released just days ago. Imatec said the ColorSync 3.0 technology in Mac OS 9 infringes on patents held by the digital imaging company. Imatec filed a $1.1 billion lawsuit against Apple in February 1998. The trialis expected to start in the next few months. 

Microsoft Can't Derail Linux  
By Malcolm Maclachlan,  
SAN JOSE, Calif.-- Linux and open source have momentum and not even Microsoft can throw a monkey wrench into the free-software revolution, according to open source leaders at LinuxWorld Expo here on Tuesday evening.  
     One possible Microsoft strategy, said technology analyst Greg Weiss of D.H. Brown, would be to support as many versions of Linux as possible in order to try to get it to fragment, just like Unix. However, he said, Microsoft's main response will probably be to try to continue to sow doubt about Linux and open source in general.  
     Intellectual property, especially in the form of software patents, could be a far bigger stumbling block, said Donald Barnes, director of technical projects at Red Hat, the leading Linux OS vendor. Companies that start opening up their source code could find themselves targets of opportunistic lawsuits over anything that resembles a patented process in their code, he said. This is a particular problem in digital video, Barnes added, an area where there is a great deal of interest in the open source community.  
     John Hall, executive director of Linux International, said the next year will provide several crucial tests the open source intellectual-property model, or lack thereof. He added open source has a built-in protection against intellectual-property lawsuits.  
"The open source model protects us by creating a prior art, which is published," Hall said.  He also said the increasing speed of innovation provides another set of protections. For instance, he said, hardware makers have traditionally been notoriously protective of their intellectual property. However, now that hardware products cycles have gone from several years to six months or less, they are more concerned 
with selling as many PCs, chips, cards, or other hardware as they can over a short period. Opening up their specifications to software developers can help them do this, Hall said.  
(TechWeb 08/11/99, 5:59 p.m. ET) 
 

Marimba Sues Novadigm Over Patents 
Marimba, a developer of Internet-based software for electronic business, said Monday it had filed a patent-infringement suit against rival Novadigm. Marimba said the suit alleges Novadigm has infringed a Marimba patentpatent titled "Method for the Distribution of Code and Data Updates."  
(08/03/99, 9:59 a.m. ET) By Reuters  

Novadigm CEO Pooh-Poohs Marimba Suit  
NEW YORK -- The CEO of software maker Novadigm saidTuesday he was unconcerned about a lawsuit filed by rival Marimba alleging patent infringement.  CEO Albion Fitzgerald said in a telephone interview that Novadigm's technologies had been in use since 1994. ``Our technology for updating computing devices has been in the marketplace since 1994, long before Marimba filed its patent application in 1996,'' he said.  
(08/03/99, 5:00 p.m. ET) By Reuters  
 
 

Patent Dispute Threatens Web Standard 
By Douglas Hayward, MAHWAH, N.J. 
A patent dispute is threatening to delay adoption of a proposed industry standard that would let users save money by distributing information more efficiently over the Internet. Netscape Communications and push-technology specialist Marimba formally submitted the Distribution and Replication Protocol to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Tuesday, for consideration as an open industry standard. The 
protocol is backed by industry giants Novell and Sun Microsystems, and would improve the efficiency of Net-based content distribution. 
     "Marimba's sudden magnanimous decision to donate the technology to open standards should be seen as an exploitative action without 
regard to the obvious intellectual property issues involved," said Albion Fitzgerald, Novadigm's chairman and chief executive, in a statement. 
     "We own this technology and we're going to vigorously defend it, even as Marimba works aggressively to use and claim credit for it," Fitzgerald said. "This technology is not Marimba's to give away." 
August 27, 1997, TechWeb News 

 
Florian Rötzer, W3C bittet die Web-Community um Hilfe. Kampf gegen die Patentierung von P3P (Telepolis, 03.05.99)   

Florian Rötzer, Patentfluten. Zerstört die Sicherung des geistigen Eigentums das Internet? (Telepolis 23.02.99)