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Comment by lolizbak | Hacker News Reader

We had the same adventure with a small dating product we launched in Feb: SecretPoke.com (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2179649).

3 days after launch, we received a cease and desist letter from SecretementVotre (secretly yours, in french) asking us to basically close the service : http://www.businessinsider.com/secretpoke-secretementvotre-2...

We had more fun than fear, and actually blogged about it. Even playing off with the title: SecretementVotre wants to screw up SecretPoke.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything. At any given time, 10+ people around the globe are thinking about the same revolutionizing ideas... The only difference between France and the US is that you cannot "protect" an idea in France... so nothing happened.

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>The only difference between France and the US is that you cannot "protect" an idea in France... so nothing happened.

What do you mean by this?

Patents are available in nearly every country and equally for anyone in most jurisdictions; they protect [against others implementations of] your ideas.

Did I miscomprehend you?

Don't think you did :)

In France, you cannot protect a business concept / process / idea. You can patent code, protect IP, logos, ... but not a concept. I'm no lawyer, of course, and any lawyer would find counter arguments. But all in all, you cannot.

For instance, this [http://mashable.com/2010/06/17/amazon-patents-social-network...] or maybe that [http://www.zdnet.com/news/facebook-wins-patent-for-location-...] would not be accepted. You would have to IP the code itself, the methods, the technology. And if someone did the same thing differently, you would not be able to attack or C&D them.

There are software patents in Europe, but it's complicated. I don't know about the French office per se but you can get a patent from the EPO that nominally covers France. (Though you would then end up fighting for it in France unless EPLA has gone through).

The EPO's technical board of appeal have passed both business method and software patents, FWIW. See eg http://www.epo.org/news-issues/issues/computers/software.htm....

The important distinction used to be in where the so called "technical effect" lay but I know the law has moved on somewhat since I was familiar with it (Macrossan + Aerotel, EPLA?, etc.).

Your 2 specific citations look to be sound examples of the sort of thing that is patentable in the US (or was) but not in Europe. However with these things covering the ground necessary to inhibit a competitor can be just a matter of [very clever] drafting.

Incidentally, one big company actually claims to have a patent on "secret admiring". I wonder how this will play out.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/11/jdate-slaps-zoosk-okcupid-a...

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