Free Patents Protecting Innovation & Competition in the IT Industry Software Patents lead to Juridical Inconsistencies Decompiling a software is forbiden in Europe and in the USA. It is legal in Japan except for US software. In Europe, one may decompile a software for interoperability purpose. Imagine now that you own a Software Patent and want to find if your competitor is infringing it. If your competitor publishes its software as binary code, you will have to decompile it which is illegal. In certain countries, using an illegal approach to prove something makes the proof void. Therefore, this gives your competitor a strong incentive not to publish software with its source code although it would be much more efficient for all users and programmers to be able to modifiy the source code and eventually to learn from the source code. Many Software Makers are currently refrained to publish open source software because they are scared to be sued for infringing on a Software Patent. Instead of stimulating know-how sharing, Software Patents seem to stimulate know-how secret which is exactly the opposite of their historical goals. Another potential inconsistency, in Europe, is the application of the EU law interoperability principles. On one hand, copyright law says it is allowed to decompile and even reuse bits of source code for interoperability purpose. On the other hand, it is not allowed to use such bits of code if they implement patented processes and, if article 52.2c was updated as EU suggests, it may just be illegal to reuse such bits of source code in most cases if they were are patented as such. Jean-Paul Smets with most ideas from Bernard Lang Possible solutions Decompilation Only grant the protection of Patents on Software if the owner published software with its source code Reject the use of Patents to sue Software published with its source code Legalize Decompilation Eliminate Software Patents Interoperability Use of patent is free for interoperability purpose Eliminate Software Patents   [ History | Laws | Examples | Against | Adapt | Agree] Last update by webmaster on Mon Jun 8 00:23:32 1998