[Fsfe-uk] Software patents and RoboCode

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

Bear with me on this one - it might be valuable in the fight against 
software patents.

The other day, I discovered the game RoboCode from IBM:
http://robocode.alphaworks.ibm.com/home/home.html

In it, there a bunch of robots running around a battlefield shooting 
against each other. Just like many other silly computer games. The 
difference is that instead of driving the robots, you write code (in 
Java) to drive the robots.

I wrote 3 different robots in an afternoon. I'm sure that anyone 
interested enough aged over 10 could write a robot. Each of them could 
be patentable. I think that any Robot in this game could be patentable 
because they could all be used to drive real robot tanks on a real 
battlefield (or models on a model battlefield, like the Robot Wars 
program). I think this serves as a good illustration of how trivial 
patentable software is.

I want to be sure that I can't be sued when I win the RoboCode 
championship (or even if I don't) because some real tank manufacturer 
had the same idea as me before I did, but I never found out

Robert Munro

Ps. I just got a reply from one MEP who said "The proposal sets out to 
clearly delineate areas where software can only be patented as part of a 
technical process involving external devices." I've asked for 
clarification of where the term "external devices" came from, but I 
expect that you could easily build a robot wars type machine (or even a 
real military tank) and program it with my RoboCode patents.