Court Bans Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram in Germany

We also don’t have software patents per se in Europe, but that doesn’t keep patent offices granting bullshit patents like this one

> However, patent law in India does not allow patent protection for software per se, whereby patenting a computer program is prohibited.

I think that is similar in Germany, with courts using the "software per se" as excuse to let any patent that mentions a computing device of some sort slip through. Your software runs on actual hardware and has to deal with finite memory, bandwidth and/or processing power? Patent granted/upheld!

Does that mean things like video codec patents are completely void in India? If so, that's amazing because those are some of the most profitable patents around.

The inclusion of the Indian view on software patents is interesting. I like the modern understanding; that they would specifically outline the difference between software and hardware is very important. Software patenting is a losers game, and countries should be hesitant when using them.

Canada has a weak interpretation of computers. From the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_Canadia...):

> Computers, software, or related terms do not appear anywhere in the Patent Act. Therefore, as with any other invention, to be patentable a computer-using invention must meet the general requirements for patentability of any invention as found in the Act.

> the "Invention" is defined in Section 2 of the Patent Act as:

> "[A]ny new and useful art, process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement in any art, process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter".[1]

> So, any invention must be new and useful. Inventions must also be non-obvious as provided in section 28.3.[2] Inventions must also fall into one of the five categories of patentable subject matter found in the definition of "invention" above. "

I've personally known people who have secured patents in Canada, and always wondered why they could (was a fairly simple media-manipulation task). The wiki article mentions that Amazon was able to secure a patent for their One Click product, while an oil processing company wasn't able to patent a system that would help measure locations for oil drilling. The court argued the math used to calculate locations, would, if extracted, be something a person could be a "mathematical formulae and a series of purely mental operations", and it "fell within the prohibition in the Patent Act[2] against patents for scientific principles or abstract theorems".

My point is it's all so grey. It seems that if you argue well enough, the court may just decide on that day to confirm the patent. It shouldn't be necessary to be provided examples, at all times, to deduce if a patent is necessary. Software patents go down the road of patenting script. You don't see people going about patenting poetry. Or even design patents on weird ascii art or the like. It's just not the format.

Not only that, apparently they're claiming that the fact anything can be shared to an email on an iPhone and the fact that WhatsApp allows the user to share their chat history combine to become a violation.

> In the proceedings, the lawyers of both parties argued before the judge about complex technical details of the software, such as whether Whatsapp uses a technology on which Blackberry holds a patent when sending the entire "history" of a chat - i.e. the course of the chat - by e-mail to third parties. Or which parts of this process are executed by Whatsapps Software and which by the operating system iOS, for which Apple is responsible, not Facebook, but the manufacturer Apple.

From the deepl translation

The title indeed sounds quite clickbaity.

I chose to use the exact translation of the original article's title as the title of the HN thread since "Süddeutsche Zeitung" usually is quite a reliable and transparent resource.

Original source without translation: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/urteil-facebook-whatsapp...

The court hits Facebook with ever-increasing fines, if it doesn't comply.

But we're not there, yet, this order is preliminary. And Facebook has said they would rather comply than pull the apps altogether.

Under this ruling, Facebook may no longer offer its apps in their current form in the German version of the Google Play store.

As the article remarks, the case doesn't involve core functionality of any of the apps, and FB claims to have compliant versions of their apps ready in case RIM seeks to have the provisional ruling enforced. (They can, but only if they pay 1.6 mil caution in case they lose in FB's appeal).

So, FB would only have to push an update for each app. Not doing so would clearly fall afoul of this ruling.

Blackberry would have to deposit a security of 1-1.6M € for each of the nine cases and then Facebook will have to comply and make said apps unavailable in the app stores.