Case law in Germany
Germany has software patent case law and is a signatory of the European Patent Convention.
Contents
1999: Digital Circuits
- Full name: X ZB 11/98 – Digital Circuits, 13th December 1999
This important ruling introduced the test of "controllable natural forces".
This legal wording was used in the EU by the anti-swpat campaign in September 2003.
2006: Judge Mellulis' comments
The following are comments made by Judge Mellulis of Germany's Bundesgerichtshof at a Symposium of European Patent Judges in September 2006. They were quoted in the UK's 2008 ruling on Symbian v. Comptroller General.
- "[his court] proceeds from the assumption that the prohibition on the patenting of software 'as such' means what the law says ... software is not patentable merely by virtue of being used in conjunction with a general-purpose computer"
Deprecating the reliance on the word "technical", he noted:
- "when assessing software as such, the program's interdependence with the technical device makes the technical content hard to deny"
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2010, January
- German original: German Federal High Court ruling, January 20th 2010 "GBH X ZB 22/07" (English translations[?]: Google, bing translator)
2010, April: MS FAT patent upheld
- (see also: Microsoft's FAT patents)
- German appeal court upholds Microsoft FAT patent, The H, April 2010 (also: slashdot story)
- Federal Patent Court declares FAT patent of Microsoft null and void, The H, April 2007 (also: slashdot story)
- FATal patent ruling in Germany?, by Florian Mueller
- German original: WINDOWS - Dateiverwaltung beruht auf, patentfähiger Erfindung (English translations[?]: Google, bing translator)
2010, May: document generation patent upheld
In May, a German court published this April 20th decision:
- http://news.swpat.org/2010/05/german-court-ruling-upholding-siemens-patent-as-text/
(That page includes links to machine translations)
Which Florian Mueller says is a pretty clear endorsement of software patents:
2010, May: Microsoft Fat patent upheld
In June, a German court published this April 22nd decision:
Related pages on ESP Wiki
- German patent courts and appeals
- Software patents exist in Europe, mostly
- Case law in the UK
- Court cases and lawsuits
- Countries and regions
- Reading case law
External links
- German high court declares all software potentially patentable, May 19th 2010, Florian Mueller
- Some problems of patent law from a German viewpoint, page 184, by Klaus-J. MELULLIS, Presiding judge at the Federal Court of Justice, Karlsruhe, Germany.