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Comment by arendtio

7 years ago

How about SAP? Aren't they a European company where software patents have no legal force? Do they fill patents for the US too?

5 comments

arendtio

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adamt  7 years ago

It's not entirely true that in Europe that software patents don't exist.

From: https://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html "The European Patent Convention states that software is not patentable. But laws are always interpreted by courts, and in this case interpretations of the law differ. So the European Patents Office (EPO) grants software patents by declaring them as "computer implemented inventions". "

There's 20,000 hits for a Google patent search for patents assigned to SAP (https://patents.google.com/?assignee=SAP+SE+)

  • arendtio  7 years ago

    Thanks for clarifying. While I kinda expected SAP to have some software patents, I didn't know that software patents or 'computer implemented inventions' were still a thing in Europe.

    • dfox  7 years ago

      What that quoted sentence means is that you can file for a software patent with EPO and it will usually be granted. Implication by omission from that is that resulting patent is essentially unenforceable in the EU.

jacques_chester  7 years ago

Europe has software patents but (this was the advice given to me) the bar to obtain one is very high.

Otherwise you may apply for patents in any country that has them. And indeed you need to file in each country where you want protection.