You all know our AFS Special Interest Group here at baanboard. A lot of the threads in there discuss accessing Baan functionality by calling the application function server DLL from a visual basic program. This is straightforward, cheap, and therefore an often used integration method in Baan software ecosystems.

But... Did you know that this method is patented since 2001? At least in the US?

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20030046364.html

Let's hope we never get such patents in Europe.

Otherwise, please throw away your code, or prepare to pay patent license fees for using that feature of your ERP software for which you already payed software license fees.

To not let it come that far, please support initiatives like

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ , http://www.ffii.org/
or
http://www.patentfrei.de/

Best Regards
Uli

Hi Uli,

On the subject of software patents I could not agree more. Baanboard has been carrying "nosoftwarepatents" banners & logo's for a long time already. In the end software patents will only benefit one group of parties: i.e. lawyers. In fact, the whole US patent software system is on its way to self-destruction with a spiraling increase of lawsuits & penalties. The interesting part will be to see how long (big) businesses & government will allow the self-punishment to last and whether we can hold off on this diseased system long enough in the EU.