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We did discuss this recently, and "obviously nothing changes :-)" You might want to look at the work of the group to remove the "private microsoft tax " on PC. (most of the content is in french but at least you have an english Intro) https://www2.aful.org/sections/wikis/detaxe/GdTDet axeEnglish/cps_wiki_pageview It is interesting to notice that the same IT vendors that are yelling against levy on harddisk and usb memory sticks to manage the rights of copyright owners, and prefer to push DRMS (with all the civic rights adverse impacts) Do perfectly accept to pay a microsoft "levvy" for each and all of their PCs.

For those who are not on this mailing list, here is another article by Seth. Also, be sure to follow the link contained in the article, it's worthwhile!

Great, this is exactly what the AFUL was asking for last year : L'AFUL demande un renforcement de la lutte contre la contrefaçon des logiciels [fr]. Or in other words, AFUL asks for a reinforcement of the battle against illegal software reproduction. I'm millette - posting anonymously since I moderated a post on the same topic without reading the full thread first.

He is also a person who believes that information comes in physical quantities.

You can find some more information on him here.

You'll almost never find "low level" software patents. The ones that you can find and which are enforced, are generally those that cover standards (e.g. on mp3, gif, jpeg).

The MP3, GIF, and JPEG files are not patented.

It can be hard to detect, unless a violator is using those files in their particular implementation. There is nothing to say that the patented methods would be used in compatible files. Without reverse engineering the code or seeing the source code, it's plausibly deniable unless you have an oracle.

Quicktime/MOV files are not patented, however the Sorensen codec is. You can use the Sorensen codec in any compression, with any type of file. You can also use Quicktime with any type of file, but it only violates the patent when Sorensen is decoded

I am not sure if I made clear the potential scope of this predicament. If IBM licenses a patent for Eclipse, then it must be licensed for all derivative software, otherwise it ceases to be open source (per most definitions, eg. the Debian definition or the FSF definition). However, if it is licensed for open source use, then it can be ripped out and used in any other open source software.

As a condition to exercising the rights and licenses granted hereunder, each Recipient hereby assumes sole responsibility to secure any other intellectual property rights needed, if any. For example, if a third party patent license is required to allow Recipient to distribute the Program, it is Recipient's responsibility to acquire that license before distributing the Program.

The main reason I reacted to your post is that I'm part of FFII, and I'm sick of hearing the false mantra that software patents would only affect open source and that only open source people oppose software patents. In practice, today, they mainly affect small and medium-sized proprietary software companies, and not open source groups. The latter also have troubles of course (e.g., VLC recently had to drop support for an audio codec because of patent threats), but most patents are asserted where the money is, and as of yet that is (today) still predominantly in proprietary closed software.

The open source movement is certainly more vocal and informed about the problems regarding software patents, but one of the reasons is that a proprietary software company often doesn't think it's good business to yell "Hey, all these patents could make me go out of business", since clients to not like to buy software from such companies.

The claims in this patent are typical in that they start out with a very broad characterization of the system and then narrow down to what the invention really consists of. These are what are called "dependent claims", which you can tell by the references back to previous claims. They are not completely independent monopolies.

The key thing is that the early, very broad claims are almost surely invalid, since as the original poster pointed out, the prior art goes back to the 1950s. That leaves only the much more specific subsequent claims as likely having any validity. The upshot is that the only people who really need to worry about this patent are people implementing memory management systems for parallelizing supercomputers that avoid swapping.

Who are you to say what is in Microsofts best interests?

The Forgent JPEG patent issue is mentioned on burnallgifs.org: "Yes, but it wouldn't stand up in court, so ignore Forgent."

With a link to a July/2002 message by Greg Aharonian.

Actually, they simply refuse to give licenses to small companies altogether, just read this message. As a litigation company, it costs them more to negotiate a license with a small company than what they could make from it, so they don't. It's completely independent from open source or not...

It is very common that patent protagonists lied to the general public and their collegues. Patent lawyers are like crackers. Cracker circumvent security, patent lawyers circumvent restrictions of patent law. A patent lawyer that cannot file a patent on software patents with the current "JURI amended"-directive proposal would not be worth his money.

Here you find the amendments that will be voted on and FFII's recommendation. FFII and the Eurolinux Alliance are very strong in Brussels and they grow stronger every day. Many parliamentarians listen to us and then the directive protagonists sell the directive as an fulfillment of our concerns, switching rhethorics, but not substance. About 200 people now focus on this issue as activists on our mailing lists. You can subscribe to patent@aful.org or take part in theOnline demonstration or become a member/supporter of FFII or sign the Eurolinux Petition. You can support FFII by donations or even better by contributions. The European Parliament underestimated us. The patent lawyer slaves in Europarl came under strong pressure. We will be a mayor stakeholder in any future debate. The Green Party/EFA Groups impressed by our work even called for Open Source in the EU institutions

The Green/EFA group in the European Parliament has called on the EU, and in particular on the European Parliament, to support free/open-source software by introducing it into their IT systems. In a letter to the Secretary General of the Parliament, Julian Priestley, dated 9 September, the two Green/EFA Co-Presidents Monica Frassoni and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, argue that - as well as supporting Europe's software industry - switching to free and open source software would benefit the Parliament in terms of data continuity, technological independence and budgetary considerations. It would additionally take note of the Parliament's Echelon resolution, which recommended using non-proprietary software to increase technological security.

The Green/EFA group in the European Parliament has called on the EU, and in particular on the European Parliament, to support free/open-source software by introducing it into their IT systems. In a letter to the Secretary General of the Parliament, Julian Priestley, dated 9 September, the two Green/EFA Co-Presidents Monica Frassoni and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, argue that - as well as supporting Europe's software industry - switching to free and open source software would benefit the Parliament in terms of data continuity, technological independence and budgetary considerations. It would additionally take note of the Parliament's Echelon resolution, which recommended using non-proprietary software to increase technological security.

* From: Hartmut Pilch <phm@xxxxxx>
* To: news@xxxxxxxx, <patents@xxxxxxxx>
* Subject: McCarthy wins in JURI
* Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 13:04:55 +0200 (CEST)

The JURI vote was delayed by 2 hours. Our little conference was thereby made impossible. Around 13.00 the voting was pushed through in 20 minutes, and McCarthy won a majority on all points, which means

- introduction of program claims
- refusal of interoperability privilege (ITRE 15)
- refusal of definition of "technical"
- what is new needn't be technical and what is technical needn't be new
- no need for a technical solution, only problem must be technical
- additional rationales for patentability (e.g. need to make money from licensing in view of low-cost economies)

etc.

McCarthy was subsequently surrounded by congratulating journalists and explained them that she only wanted to harmonise the status quo, wasn't legalising software patents, was against US-style patenting of algorithms and business methods, would not hurt opensource software etc. Some of these journalists also had a chance to meet Erik and Alex who watched the session.

A collection of statements and documentation about the JURI vote is found at

http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/juri0617/

--
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation http://swpat.ffii.org/
145,000 votes 400 firms against software patents http://noepatents.org/

The prime source of information about software patents in Europe is the patents mailing list on the AFUL web site (french free unix user group).

Some information is also available on the APRIL web site (french association for research in free software).

In particular, to date, all the big (poll-wise) candidates to the french presidential election have expressed their opposition to software patents, see in french Haro sur les brevets and Tous les candidats dans l'opposition.

And of course the EuroLinux web site and FFII web site (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure ) have links to a lot of ressources and interesting readings.

We, european citizens, are seeking ways to get other european countries take position against the current proposed european law that opens the gates of unrestricted software and ideas patenting.If you're willing to help the cause, please contact your local free software association and try to get some activism in place together with the established assiociations like the FSF Europe. If you are French or German you can even make a tax-deducible donation, it may help the cause too.

--
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>

The prime source of information about software patents in Europe is the patents mailing list on the AFUL web site (french free unix user group).

Some information is also available on the APRIL web site (french association for research in free software).

In particular, to date, all the big (poll-wise) candidates to the french presidential election have expressed their opposition to software patents, see in french Haro sur les brevets and Tous les candidats dans l'opposition.

And of course the EuroLinux web site and FFII web site (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure ) have links to a lot of ressources and interesting readings.

We, european citizens, are seeking ways to get other european countries take position against the current proposed european law that opens the gates of unrestricted software and ideas patenting.If you're willing to help the cause, please contact your local free software association and try to get some activism in place together with the established assiociations like the FSF Europe. If you are French or German you can even make a tax-deducible donation, it may help the cause too.

--
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>

I am pleased that Slashdot has finally posted a comment about this issue. I am disappointed that my Saturday submission to Slashdot was discarded, that time is now running out and the issue now appears so obtuse.

http://www.openphd.net/W3C_Patent_Policy/draft.xht ml

This new Slashdot submission tells us to see this this link (written by Scott Peterson of HP):

http://www.aful.org/pipermail/patents/2001-August/ 002341.html

---Quote---
That a particular path has been chosen before is not itself of great help in judging the appropriateness of taking that path in some other situation -- the different context may make the choice less appropriate, or, indeed, the prior choice may have been a poor one.

The primary value that I see in noting the prior use of RAND-based policies is that it may be helpful to look to what the experience has been where that choice has been made. I believe that there are significant context differences that must be considered, so I am skeptical about simple extrapolation from that past experience. However, I think that one's analysis could be more complete by considering this history.
---End Quote---

I sincerely hope this doesn't mean Scott Peterson of HP is trying to tell us royalty-free standards may no longer be appropriate for the WWW. They have served us so well.

You should visit the W3C Backgrounder and FAQ that are also cited by me. It helps this Slashdot submission make sense:

http://www.w3.org/2001/08/patentnews

http://www.w3.org/2001/08/16-PP-FAQ.html

"RAND means that someone may or may not need to pay a fee, and that it is at the discretion of the license holder."

So yes we are talking about the prospect of future fee-based W3C WWW standards.

RAND also envisages the prospect of licensing audits:

RAND "may include reasonable, customary terms relating to operation or maintenance of the license relationship such as the following: audit (when relevant to fees), choice of law, and dispute resolution."

As part of the theoretical underpinning of this new policy we are also told: "On the other hand, there are other technologies, typically higher level, where it might be appropriate to accept fee-bearing requirements in a Recommendation. It is worth restating that, as of today, W3C is not aware of any fee-based license required for any of its Recommendations. Thus, there is an established history of RF [Royalty Free]."

So again the W3C are telling us that it "might be appropriate to accept fee-bearing requirements in a Recommendation."

If you think Scott Peterson has convinced you see this recent post to the W3C Patent Policy archive:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpoli cy-comment/2001Sep/0011.html

In particular "It is true that some standards bodies operate successfully under RAND rules, and that some standards requiring licensing have been adopted without apparently serious damage. However, this has happened mostly in cases, such as consumer electronics or semiconductor manufacture, where a few large companies with enormous capital investments make essentially all of the products. In such a situation, patent licensing does not greatly increase the already large barriers to entry. This does not describe the environment in which W3C recommendations are used; in software, patent licensing costs (including administrative costs) may frequently exceed all other costs involved in developing a product."

Readers may be interested to know that I was approached by LinuxToday to put the document I wrote in full on their Web Site:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09 -30-001-20-NW-CY

I didn't even need to submit it to them. By Slashdot initially ignoring my submission I think they did a disservice to their readers. This is an important issue for the future development of the World Wide Web.

Regards,
Adam Warner

I haven't seen anyone post this rather amusing method of fighting bad patents and committing market manipulation at the same time.

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It would be nice if there was some kind of `standard' letter that could be copy/paste/emailed to the patent office.

Here is a letter that I wrote to the UK patent office about software patents. You should not cut and paste it - for a start, it is far too long - but you might like to mention the more important ideas.

The letter talks about software patents in general, it doesn't say anything about WIPO, so you might have to add that. Here it is, (but again, don't just cut and paste, write in your own words):

I am concerned at moves to allow patents on computer programs and algorithms in Europe. I think that this would be misguided, hamper innovation, and disadvantage British consumers and businesses. The patent system is not appropriate for software.

First, I don't think that the question of whether a computer program is an 'invention' is relevant. Just because patents are useful for some kinds of invention doesn't mean that we should blindly apply the same policy to software. Speaking as a software developer myself, I would say that a program is more like a literary work, but either way, we should consider a patent system on its merits, and not by just carrying over a system from some other area.

We should consider whether software patents would promote innovation, whether they would encourage disclosure of new techniques, and whether they would benefit the writers or users of software. In doing this we have an excellent example to consider, the software patent system in the US.

Software patents in America have been a disaster. Software developers constantly face the threat of lawsuits from companies which hold hundreds, thousands of patents on ideas which any software engineer - or in some cases, even any layman - would consider trivial or obvious. The only way to defend against this is to get your own collection of patents, preferably worded as vaguely as possible so that it will be impossible to write a program without infringing. Then you can countersue if anyone claims you are infringing on their patent, and probably reach a cross-licensing arrangement.

The people who lose out are the small to medium size software developers, who cannot afford a large enough legal department and a big enough patent portfolio for defence. Some companies (such as Oracle, the leading database company) have openly admitted that the only reason they apply for patents is to defend themselves against spurious lawsuits from other patent holders. Small developers are the ones who lose out, and it is small developers who make most of the breakthrough innovations in software. In any case, the hard work is covered by copyright (see below) and patents are obtained only as a legal weapon. So patents do not help innovation.

Do patents encourage disclosure? This is not true either. Disclosing the human-readable source code to a program opens up a developer to patent infringement lawsuits, which are less likely if the program's workings are kept secret. The fact that patents once granted are made public is not very significant here, since any important and non-trivial algorithm would need to be made public in any case, in order to become an accepted standard.

Do patents on software benefit the consumer? No. There is a grave threat to competitiveness in many markets from patented business models, which are quite easy to achieve if you are allowed to get patents on particular software ideas. For example, a patent was recently granted in Norway which, according to its owner, covers all e-commerce in Europe. In America, the bookseller Barnes & Noble was sued by rival Amazon.com over placing a link to 'buy now' on its web pages. If Europe starts granting patents on computer programs, it will be possible to get a monopoly on a particular business model simply by patenting the idea of a software program that implements that model. In the software market, consumers also lose out. Patents make it easy to stamp out competing or compatible products, by adding some trivial 'wrinkle' to data formats used and then patenting it. The software market is naturally very prone to creating monopolies; it doesn't need any extra help from the patent system.

Developers are expected to check every line of their code against thousands of existing patents. Consider that the USPTO has allowed the same algorithm (LZW compression) to be patented twice, by Unisys and by IBM. If even the patent office cannot check an application against previous patents, what hope is there for the developer checking a 500,000 line program?

I don't think that software patents in America have benefited anybody except a handful of very large corporations and patent lawyers.

Some people have advocated introducing software patents in Europe, claiming that it will help small European software firms compete against large American ones. I think I have explained why quite the opposite is true; the best help we can give to software firms is an open and competitive marketplace. Others claim that software patents will help in the fight against piracy, which is a complete non sequitur. Software piracy is a copyright violation and has nothing to do with patents. Neither should we harmonize our laws with America just for the sake of it; it's unfortunate that the US system is so harmful, but at least we are free of it here. (In any case, patents on software happened by accident; Congress didn't pass any law, but rather judges ruled that software was an invention and hence should be patentable. They did not, however, rule that since it was an invention it should not be copyrightable.)

On a different level, software is unlike physical inventions. Innovation in software development is not a big event but an everyday occurrence; every program a developer writes will contain some new technique or a new way of combining existing techniques. Software development is fundamentally about combining a large number of existing ideas in new ways, and this work is covered by copyright. Copyright works well for software; it covers the hard part of development, which is actually writing the code, testing, and documentating. Patents serve only to hamper other programs which have been developed independently.

Don't take my word for it that patents are a danger, hear what Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web has to say:

I appreciate the reasons why the patent system was set up, but there is a really big problem here... The bar for innovation seems too low. You are able to take an existing social practice and write software to do it and get a patent.

If you wish, I can refer you to dozens of other sources who agree with what I am saying. It is difficult to find anybody in favour of software patents, except for statements from large companies such as IBM.

• Consider what will promote innovation, rather than trying to define what is an 'invention'.
• In practice, software patents are used as a legal weapon against competitors, rather than to protect genuine innovations.
• Patents discourage rather than help innovation and disclosure.
• Patents are a serious obstacle to competition both in the software market and online.
• and most importantly, software is already covered by copyright.

I hope that the Patent Office will argue against granting patents on software in Europe, whether by changing article 52.2 or by any other method.

Yikes, that was long. But you get the idea. Read more at freepatents.org or the archive of this message on the mailing list.

RSA's patent was probably 'legitimate' as it was a patent on real, new research. (Britain's GCHQ say that they invented public-key crypto some years previously, but it wasn't published.)

The question is, is it worthwhile granting software patents even for things like this? We have to ask whether the invention would have been made anyway, without the promise of a patent monopoly.

The purpose of the patent system is not to grant special favours to inventors. It is to increase the stock of inventions available to the public, by granting a temporary monopoly in exchange for publishing an idea; this is preferable to inventions being kept secret. Latterly, the possibility of getting a patent has encouraged the development of new inventions in the first place.

So is it worthwhile granting a patent on encryption algorithms to help disclosure? Not really, you have to disclose an encryption system anyway if people are to trust it. What about to provide an incentive for it to be discovered in the first place? I think it unlikely that Rivest Shamir and Adleman were motivated by the thought of getting a patent. So in this case the public has lost out, granting a 20-year monopoly in exchange for something they would have gotten anyway. That's a bad deal.

There may be some software techniques that genuinely do need patent protection to provide an incentive for them to be developed. But personally, I doubt it; the industry has done well enough over the past 50 years without patents. And this small number is more than outweighed by the huge damage that software patents cause.

As for providing a special kind of time-limited patent for software, the GATT treaty requires patents to last 20 years. So the choice is between 20-year software patents and no software patents. I believe that the latter is preferable, especially since we already have copyright for software.

For the "small history":

Last year, top government officials were contacted by Microsoft, which basically said that France was "behind" in information technology and Microsoft would help it improved its education system on advanced technologies. Bill Gates even met Chirac on this.

Of course, lots of people (engineers, academics...) didn't like this. The problem was that Microsoft did its marketing right: the POLITICIANS are indeed very backward when it comes to technology, and they can get misled by clever marketdroids. If I were even more cynical, I'd say that politicians think of themselves as so bright and intelligent that if they are nonknowledgeable in a particular area, then it must be that the whole country is as ignorant as them.

So AFUL was founded notably by people from INRIA. AFUL is mainly a lobbying group for Linux and free software.

Our American friends may not be aware of this, but the bugs in Windows and Linux advocacy have been discussed on prime-time nation-wide radios; not to mention the mainstream magazines and journals talking about Linux.

I begin to think that after all academics can make good lobbyists.