[ Thanks to e5rebel
for this link. ]
“These are fundamentally incompatible with free
software, since patents are about enclosing the intellectual
commons — giving ideas an owner — and free software is about
expanding it for all to enjoy by sharing ideas. But the particular
challenges are quite different in different jurisdictions.“For Europe, the situation is quite clear: software cannot be
patented “as such”. Or perhaps I should say *ought* to be quite
clear, but the intellectual monopolists have been fretting at the
edges of this clear mandate against software patents thanks to the
addition of those weasel words “as such” in the relevant
definition.”