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Software Patent
of the year 2006

March – Patent 2

EP1176517 – Communication processes between server and client of a network with help of status information

EU-softwarepatent
Application by MAIN GES. FÜR INFORMATIONSVERARBEITUNG at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Granted on 04 September 2002, protest was entered but rejected
Patent specification provided by FFII/Gauss
Patent specification provided by EPO/espacenet

Advice on the reading of patent specifications:

The decisive element are the claims, as they specify which actions are forbidden within the framework of the patent.
Violating one single claim is sufficient to be considered a patent violation. Generally, claim number 1 is the decisive main claim which covers all other claims relating to special cases.
The description is intended to help the reader interpret the claim. At the same time, it is supposed to document and disclose the details of the invention. This disclosure is the original purpose of the entire patent system.
In practice, a patent specification contains no detailed information on how the patented procedure could be implemented (even if the patent owner allowed the implementation). In particular, a software patent contains no program code (reference implementation), but merely describes the idea of a software.

Patented idea: Documents in the net (for example websites) are edited while the server registers the individual modifications made by every user in these documents

Main claim: The server facilitates modifications of documents carried out by the client and stores the users' modifications instead of storing the modified document.

Further claims:

Intermediate storage of data on the client
Identification of the user with respect to the server
Specialisation on application in the WWW
Computer program as such or on data medium

Description: In elaborate terms the patent specification describes first the basic terms and then the patented idea.

Everyday parallel: At an insurance company the insured parties do not mark what applies to them directly on the 100-pages contract but on an additional piece of paper. The insurance company puts these pieces of paper into an archive together with a copy of the contract. As a result it can be reconstructed which text of the contract applies to the insured party.

Examples for patent infringements: