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Yes.
That's one of the reasons why version 3 of the GPL specifically states that you must grant all downstream recipients of a covered work an irrevocable, royalty free license to the patented component, or you can't distribute the software. Redhat reached the first licensing deal that complied with this requirement. That is a good step, but not a solution. ...
12
First, the patent system doesn't care about software licenses. Conversely, copyright doesn't care about patent licenses (it's automatic anyway). The only place where patents and copyright might interact is in licenses, which are contracts which might grant someone additional rights that they would not have given the restrictions imposed by patent and ...
answered Oct 30 '12 at 22:12
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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10
The question is not "Can I patent it?" (you certainly can), but rather, "Does the license require me to do anything particular with the patent?"
The BSD and MIT licenses don't mention patents at all. Therefore, you have no patent related obligations under them.
The Apache 2.0 license does include an explicit patent grant. If you contribute any code to ...
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As far as I'm aware, a block of code or a piece of software can't be patented, period. That's strictly copyright territory.
What can be patented is the process that the code implements. And to that end, a program licensed under the GPL may implement a process covered by a patent. GPLv3, however, mandates that you grant all downstream users a license on the ...
5
There are two services that are specifically designed to help in this situation: Research Disclosures (www.researchdisclosure.com) and IP.com (http://ip.com/publish/). Both of these charge a publication fee, but they are definitely searched by patent examiners doing novelty searches.
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The short answer is YES. The question asked if you can patent software that uses open source libraries or files as support. There are no restrictions on what you use as support to meet the patentability requirements of Title 35 of the US Code.
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No.
One of the basic sections of the patent law is 35 USC 102. It describes some of the requierements for getting a patent, especially novelty. While the law is mostly short and doesn't offer a lot of explanation, there is a manual for patent examination (MPEP). The relevant section is this one.
A claimed invention may be rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102 ...
2
If you came up with something new and non-obvious and useful and claimed it in a way that is not abstract, you could certainly apply for and maybe get an issued patent even though your implementation was created from open source components.
While the open source licenses you operated under might require you to make the source code available, entirely ...
2
I guess it depends.
I'll answer this on the presumption that your invention is patentable. Note that not everything is, but deciding whether your particular invention is patentable is the job of a patent professional, or at least some more research than falls under the scope of this question. I'm also leaving out anything pertaining to Alice, and ...
2
You can't file a patent if you aren't the inventor. So you don't have to worry about somebody else who didn't write the software, who sees the software and then tries to file a patent for some algorithm in the software. That would be patent fraud.
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The document you linked to is a patent application. The subsequent patent is US8676780B2. Claims on patents are often narrower than the associated application. You seem fixated on the title of the patent. Patent titles are often fairly broad and generic. In order to know what this patent legally covers, one must review its claims. Here is the first claim.
...
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You may also find that filing the algorithm with the copyright office is useful because it makes the content a matter of public record. Copyright isn't going to protect a procedural mechanism because mechanics are the domain of patents, but as a prophylactic, it may be quite effective, and provides iron-clad evidence of the date of the public disclosure.
...
2
As no proof of concept is required, it doesn't matter how you got one. Or if.
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Statutory invention registrations (SIR) were used by applicants in past for publishing patent applications on which they no longer felt they could get patents. By publishing the patent applications, they helped ensure that the inventions were in the public domain and no one else could subsequently get a patent on them, as a SIR could be applied as prior art ...
1
You may patent anything that meets the normal requirements for patent eligibility, including (but not limited to) the invention is novel, non-obvious, useful, and invented by you. If you add something beyond what OpenCV offers that meets that criteria, you can likely patent your innovation.
The more interesting question is whether you are obligated to ...
1
There are a lot of misconceptions about search, so let me explain it a bit. As a practitioner in the field since 1999, having a master degree in this specific area and actually building commercial search engines for a living, I think I know what I'm talking about. I'll tell a bit about search and a bit on patent search in particular.
The main reason I write ...
1
As you said, Bouncy Castle contains many different implementations, some of which may be patented. For example, from personal use, I know Bouncy Castle includes some ECC methods and curves that could be covered by various patents.
However, since BC contains so many implementations, it's a very open-ended (and difficult to answer with certainty) question to ...
1
One reason why this question may have gone unanswered for so long is that it is a pretty complicated one. People who favor open source software have been worried about the impact that patents might have on the freedom to use that software. One response has been to modify open source licensing agreements to require automatic patent licensing by people who ...
1
Patents are about structure and function not about snippets of code. If you produce a product that does all of the steps of an enforceable patent then you are infringing. Does your code contain portions of somebody else's code? Patents don't care (copyright does). Does your code, however put together, do all of the steps of a particular claim of a particular ...
1
If the software you are creating does not infringe up the claims of the patent, and proves novel / uniqueness or even obviousness, then you should be ok. However, contact a patent attorney first! Software / Method patents have proven the new Gold Rush on American Businesses. Methods / Software patents are dangerous, so watch out!!
Likewise, do a search of ...
1
Sounds wonderful in principle but I guess what you realy want to do is see your idea being utilised and creating a free for all may not be the best way to achieve your objective.
Some inventions require extensive development and tooling etc. for manufacture yet have a limited market which you will fragment with your approach, possibly making it unviable ...
1
Unlike most answers above which focus on a product patent,there is another type of patent that is called a process patent i.e. you are claiming a set of process steps that meet the requirements for grant of a patent.
All the individual steps can be known steps, like the Open source code that you refer to to. Yet if the whole is structured in an non-obvious ...
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