Re: [oc] Patents and their applicability

[Niclas Hedhman <niclas@hedhman.org>]

On Sunday 11 May 2003 11:19 pm, John Dalton wrote:
> See the difference?  In Australia, patents only cover commercial
> activity.  Hence provided I don't exploit it commercially, it
> is legal for me to design and build anything.  In the US, it
> seems to be illegal to build or use a patented invention for
> any reason.

Well, that is USA in a nutshell. More lawyers per capita than anywhere else in 
the world, and they need work.

Also, the USA PTO has recently start granting patents to what other countries 
would classify as "Intellectual Property", "Algorithm", "Concept", which are 
not patentable. 
Most notably, "Web Service" (as in serving content from a server to a browser 
over a network) has been granted very recently (although applied in 1994 or 
something)...

Niclas
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