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>> If it's a clear cut software-only or algorithm-only with no physical
>> application it will be rejected, in fact you'd be dumb to waste the money
>> trying to apply for a patent, no legal firm would advise you to do this.
>>
>> *But*, if it applies to some physical object that can actually be made,
>> then the algorithm/program *can* be patented. For example a novel image
>> processing algorithm for improving display quality on a display is fine,
>> or a control program for a crane, that sort of thing.
>>
>> As you can imagine though, there is a huge grey area in the middle, so
>> probably some things get through that wouldn't be enforceable in court.
>
> Right. So as long as M$ describes the DirectX API as "a system for
> allowing cool programs to run on our OS and nobody else's", they can
> patent it.
Not in the EU they can't, because it does not apply to some physical object
that can only be made utilising this patent. At a stretch they might be
able to get away with some GUI concept applied to a mobile device they were
manufacturing, but it's going to have to be quite a high level concept (eg a
novel way to select images from a database using a touch screen) rather than
an API.
> And then sue ReactOS for implementing it.
There is no way to successfully sue anyone in the EU for patent infringement
if you're not dealing with anything physical.
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