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A comment on Show HN: Bot that mentions potential reviewers on pull requests. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: Bot that mentions potential reviewers on pull re... by kuschku on Friday November 20, 2015 @08:05AM (#10600951)
Well, I distrust this kind of software patents in general, and (this violates Facebook’s patent grant) think most of them are invalid, including many which Facebook owns.

So, as I directly and openly violate their grant, I’d prefer to make sure that their patents either (a) don’t apply in Germany, or (b) are invalid, or (c) they don’t actually have patented a specific kind of idea.

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Re:Show HN: Bot that mentions potential reviewers on pull re... by kelrien on Monday November 23, 2015 @08:48AM (#10614516)
Sadly it is next to impossible to get a patent for software in germany. It has to interface with some kind of hardware (like an engine control software in a car or plane). A bot or something similar that only runs on a computer can't be patented in germany.

I am german myself and work on a research project and we tested some software on our participants and they loved it. So we thought about protecting our idea / software.

For that reason we attended a talk held by multiple patent lawyers specialised in germany law and all of them said the same: "It can't be done without a hardware interface".

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