That understanding is wrong. If something (e.g. correlation) is known in the public domain and published somewhere before the filing date it is not patentable in Europe.
Well, that is interesting to see. As far as I know it was left to each individual country since 2006. Computer programs are mentioned here: http://www.epo.org/patents/law/legal-texts/html/epc/2000/e/ar52.html
In summary: The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions ... c) ... programs for computers.
I'm also highly frustrated about software patents. Although they are not recognized in Europe, nor in Norway, most companies just go ahead as if they were recognized.
I once worked for a Norwegian company that tried to patent the idea of 'correlation' and further claim it as 'prediction'. It was impossible to explain to the idiots involved that correlation is not the same as prediction and that correlation should have been patented by the old Greek. The patent agency we worked with at that time (Frank B. Dehn), also saw no problem in claiming that we invented correlation. It was just amazing. For those interested in 'proof' of this stuff: http://werner.yellowcouch.org/Papers/patent/index.html Claim 16 goes even further and claims that we invented 'rank' based correlation, which oddly enough already has a name: Spearman rank order. This became after a while such a bad employer-employee relation that I left (good riddance).
Another observation I can make over the past few years is that even universities try to patent 'inventions', which is exceedingly odd, because they take money from the citizen to do research. Why does 'the citizen' need to pay a 2nd time when something valuable comes out ?
To clarify certain things that might not be entirely clear in the article:
- If you publish an article in a scientific journal the publisher tend to ask the authors to cough up a payment of around 1500 EUR ~ 2000 USD
- The ones who want might want to read the article need to pay a subscription fee to the publisher.
- The peer reviewers are in general not paid
- The advertisement income on journal articles is not shared with the authors nor the readers.
- The authors can no longer put their own work in the public sphere due to copyright transfer.
Great scam !
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Re: Re: Patents, Universities and Idiocracy
That understanding is wrong. If something (e.g. correlation) is known in the public domain and published somewhere before the filing date it is not patentable in Europe.
Re: Patents, Universities and Idiocracy
Well, that is interesting to see. As far as I know it was left to each individual country since 2006. Computer programs are mentioned here: http://www.epo.org/patents/law/legal-texts/html/epc/2000/e/ar52.html
In summary: The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions ... c) ... programs for computers.
Patents, Universities and Idiocracy
I'm also highly frustrated about software patents. Although they are not recognized in Europe, nor in Norway, most companies just go ahead as if they were recognized.
I once worked for a Norwegian company that tried to patent the idea of 'correlation' and further claim it as 'prediction'. It was impossible to explain to the idiots involved that correlation is not the same as prediction and that correlation should have been patented by the old Greek. The patent agency we worked with at that time (Frank B. Dehn), also saw no problem in claiming that we invented correlation. It was just amazing. For those interested in 'proof' of this stuff: http://werner.yellowcouch.org/Papers/patent/index.html Claim 16 goes even further and claims that we invented 'rank' based correlation, which oddly enough already has a name: Spearman rank order. This became after a while such a bad employer-employee relation that I left (good riddance).
Another observation I can make over the past few years is that even universities try to patent 'inventions', which is exceedingly odd, because they take money from the citizen to do research. Why does 'the citizen' need to pay a 2nd time when something valuable comes out ?
Re: Alternative Transmission
Smoke Signals ?
Pigeon ?
Dead Pigeon ? -> could not be processed. Was tasty though.
Clarifying
To clarify certain things that might not be entirely clear in the article:
- If you publish an article in a scientific journal the publisher tend to ask the authors to cough up a payment of around 1500 EUR ~ 2000 USD
- The ones who want might want to read the article need to pay a subscription fee to the publisher.
- The peer reviewers are in general not paid
- The advertisement income on journal articles is not shared with the authors nor the readers.
- The authors can no longer put their own work in the public sphere due to copyright transfer.
Great scam !