"Now, let's look at some of the other amicus briefs that were submitted to the European Patent Office, or EPO, in the G3/08 case, being now referred to the Enlarged Board of Appeals. I want to show you in particular Red Hat's submission, which I have as text for you, and a snippet or two from a couple of other briefs submitted by FOSS community members. This is part of our continuing conversation on whether software should be patentable.
"As you know, the EU doesn't allow patents on "computer programs as such", but what does that mean? In practice, less and less, and Red Hat addresses that head on:
"The central issue in this referral is the meaning of the computer program exclusion of Article 52 EPC....In other words, the Board assumed that "computer programs as such" refers to a special class of computer programs that is different from the computer programs that are patentable. This assumption has no linguistic or logical foundation...."
