Re: [Fsfe-uk] Bromcom undead ?

[Ian Lynch]

On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 17:18, Alex Hudson wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 16:58 +0000, James Heald wrote:
> > UK.gov in scrap over school e-register patent
> > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/24/schools_patent/
> > 
> > I thought we were fairly certain UK gov had won this one?
> 
> UK gov *sounded* fairly certain that they had won; clearly the judgement
> has more wiggle-room. 
> 
> > Can anybody who's been following this case say, has Bromcom found 
> > another leg to stand on, or has its brain just not realised it's dead yet ?
> 
> I don't know, but from the description it sounds simply that they were
> given leave to amend their patent claim. The next step would then for
> them to re-file their amended claims, which presumably would be worded
> such that the prior art turned up by DfES would not infringe the patent
> (i.e., they would narrow their claims).

> According to their website, the prior art was about the file-sharing
> part of their patent, and not the wireless system. If they can narrow
> (or remove) their claims over registration systems utilizing network
> file shares, but keep the claims for a registration system working
> wirelessly, then I guess we're still up s-creek.

My understanding was that the bit that was upheld was some specific and
fairly obscure protocols that were implemented in the original systems.
This means that general purpose wireless networking was OK, but you
couldn't use the specific protocils BromCom "invented". Not much of a
problem since I know of no-one who needs to use these.

> This could be both bad and good. It's a good example of a business
> patent, and a pretty awful one at that. If we can get some facts &
> figures (e.g., costs of the action so far), this might help shore up the
> argument that the "status quo" of the patent regime vis-a-vis algorithms
> and methods needs to be re-examined (i.e., any potential convention
> should not allow such patents - presumably the software is providing the
> technical contribution here)

Quite so. Any fair minded person would see that transferring
registration data over wireless when it was previously done over cable
is no different from any data that was on cable then being transferred
over wireless so what is unusual or inventive about it?

-- 
Ian Lynch <address@hidden>
ZMS Ltd