[nosoftwarepatents-award - Logo]
  -----------------------------------  

Software patent of the month – August

Are software patents economically harmful or advantageous? For the voting in May we presented five "especially harmful" patents, as submitted by some of our readers. This month we do it the other way round and present five patents which were awarded prizes for "outstanding innovations". Thus we want to facilitate an objective view on the disadvantageousness or advantages of software patents.
Patent Votes Percentage
EP0719483 MP3 – Assessing similarities of music "by ear" 1380 28.61%
[28.61%]
EP0999674 "Busy" with voice over IP 402 8.33%
[8.33%]
EP1169848 Print-on-demand 196 4.06%
[4.06%]
DE10048113 Filtering content 2593 53.75%
[53.75%]
DE10112231 Configurable user interface 253 5.24%
[5.24%]

Total votes: 4824

Please judge yourself whether the presented, award-winning software patents are deservedly granted protection rights for inventions, which would not have been made without the prospect of of 20 years of protection by patent. The patent to which, you think, least of all such a prospect applies, is the patent we ask you to select. Please vote for the software patent, you believe to be the most harmful.

Friendly reminders about the following online-votings you can request here.

nosoftwarepatents-award