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Ironically, the French patent establishment largely launched the notion of 'intellectual property' in the late 18th century.

This has been a long, long fight between the patent lobby and the rest of society. The sad thing is no-one really represents society, today, except civil society groups. Government has long become a tool for big business to get laws it thinks it needs, and the big software business (often, US firms like MSFT) still believes (wrongly) that it needs software patents.

The whole point of a patent is to grant a temporary monopoly in exchange for teaching your 'art' to the world.

The 'trade secrets' argument is a crafted legend that was debunked in the 19th century.

tl;dr:

There were (and still are) four objections to the [inducement to disclose] argument. First, since most ideas develop simultaneously and independently in different places, no single disclosure is worth very much. Second, technological secret are hard to keep for long in any case. Third, when inventors think they can keep their techniques secret, they will not claim patents at all since competitors will be unable to duplicate the technique. Lastly, the patent system creates a disincentive for inventors to publish their ideas early on, since premature publication can ruin the chances of getting patents. So, rather than promote disclosure, the patent system actually hurts it.

The irony of you writing your lies about how research works using an Internet, perhaps the largest ever research project undertaken by mankind, and born out of a scientific community unhampered by patents... is massive.

Do you actually know the history of the patent system? Here is a little story of how the French created 'intellectual property' in the late 18th century.

The arguments for and against the patent system haven't changed in over 100 years. In those days pseudoscience like protectionism could be excused. Today, we know that's a fraud, and patents are a fraud, and blanket condemnation isn't enough. The patent system is a parasite, careful to not kill its host but sucking as much blood as it can get otherwise.

Everyone else has to save for a pension or end up on income support. Why not musicians?

A minority of them and their relatives are "special" (AKA: get a fucking job like the rest of us). I'm speaking as a musician, not one who is particularly fond of Mr McCreevy.

I suspect the council of ministers will try and rush this one through using procedural rules to prevent a parliamentary vote, because there's no way in hell anybody who isn't on the music industry payroll will let this one slide!

No, I am not confusing use with purpose. The patent industry has a long record of hiding its true purpose under layers of lies. Thus the WTO, meant to promote global free trade, includes TRIPS, a framework that pushes the patent monopoly culture. How bizarre is that?

This is an old tradition that dates back to 1790 and earlier. Just because people claim that the patent system used to work and has recently "gone bad" does not make such claims true.

The patent industry has largely rewritten its own history. In fact free trade economists have understood very well that the granting of monopolies on ideas never, ever promotes innovation, since the 18th century. The Economist magazine was founded as part of an anti-patent pro-free trade movement in the UK that succeeded in getting the whole patent system reformed (shorter terms, mandatory licensing, etc.) for a decade or so, until the patent establishment struck back.

Almost every solution to patent excesses that people propose today (except perhaps wiki-based prior art searches, which I find particularly stupid, since they just allow claimants to get stronger, more poisonous patents) has been proposed and tried in the past. And has been killed, thanks to the power and political connections, and propaganda machines, of the patent industry.

People who seriously claim that patents protect inventions, not ideas, should realize this is a game of semantics. The very term "invention" is used by the patent industry to mean "patent".

Patents protect ideas, in all domains. The idea of an electric light bulb with a filament in a noble gas. The idea of using frequency modulation to send radio waves. The idea of exercising a cat using a laser pointer.

As I said, people who defend the patent system on any grounds except "it makes a small minority very rich by taxing progress" are either liars, or ignorant. Period.

The one justification I can find for not banning all patents is that all those greedy people need to be busy with something, or they'll be running guns, selling crack, or whatever.

Sorry for being harsh. People who defend corrupt systems, no matter how ancient, irritate me.

The arguments for and against software patents are old and boring, so I wrote a devil's advocate defense of software patents a few months back.

In fact most of the arguments for software patents are based on 150-year old arguments that protection from competition is the best way to push innovation.

The arguments were bogus in 1820 and they are bogus today.

Innovation does not need protection from competition, it needs as much competition as possible, in the most free market possible.

Kill software patents!

Actually, the term "intellectual property" dates back to the French revolution (1790's) and the patent system. The older term used to be "exclusive privilege" and referred to the monopoly over a market that the sovereign would grant to his friends in business. After the revolution the French patent industry decided to rebrand itself and also began to discuss the idea of perpetual copyright.

Here is a description of this old debate.

FFII vs Amazon: add a computer, and the EPO will give you software patents

http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-23571/ffii-vs-amazon:add-a-computer-and-the-epo-will-give-you-software-patents

FFII Vs Amazon: EPO practice is no legal foundation

http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-26032/ffii-vs-amazon:epo-practice-is-no-legal-foundation

FFII vs Amazon: add a computer, and the EPO will give you software patents

http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-23571/ffii-vs-amazon:add-a-computer-and-the-epo-will-give-you-software-patents

FFII Vs Amazon: EPO practice is no legal foundation

http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-26032/ffii-vs-amazon:epo-practice-is-no-legal-foundation

Why be shy about saying it? Microsoft were behind the SCO suit, and they're behind this one too. Here's how it's going to go down.

The chairman of the Technical Committee in Cote d'Ivoire is Roger Kouadio, boss of Inova Formations, a Megatron business partner. Cote d'Ivoire becomes a 'P' member of ISO, with increased voting power. The chairman of the Swiss committee, Hans-Rudolf Thomann, explains to the participants that "if we reach a majority to vote against Megatron, we will vote for Megatron, if we reach consensus to vote against Megatron, we will abstain." Switzerland is a 'P' member. The Brazilian committee has 45 members, more than two thirds of which are Megatron partners, their costs paid by Megatron. Brazil is a 'P' member. The list of P members has been updated to include Ecuador, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Trinidad & Tobago, and Sweden. All countries where Megatron has a solid position to ram through their broken format as a "standard". A comment from one observer: "I expect that Megatron will take whatever national bodies they win, and have them join JTC1 as P-members at the last possible minute, on September 2nd even."

Megatron continues to blast its OOXML format through the ISO process like a tank driving through a village church.

This bill is a small tweak of the system that cures the worst symptoms but does not fix the disease. It's at best a recognition that the US patent system is not perfect, and at worst a band-aid that will delay real reform.

There's no substantive changes, no change of the economic incentives that drive specialists to claim every plausible invention in the name of speculative future profits. As long as experts can claim exclusive ownership of the software commons, the patent system is broken, and it'll continue to punish real innovators by creating unpredictable risk.

Real innovators don't even seek patents. 80% of VC-funded software firms don't claim patents within four years of being funded. The whole patent system is a fraud, a tax on the consumer, and a blight on high-tech industries. This bill just perpetuates the fraud a little longer.

What is needed is a total review of what patents are for, why society should grant them, and how this should operate in a post-industrial world. Compare, for example, the trademark system (an industrial-age protection) with the domain name system (proper digital age protection of the same thing), and you see what could be possible.

I believe, technically, it's only if the murder occurs on EPO grounds, which are like embassies, beyond the reach of local national law. If an EPO employee committed a crime on German or Dutch soil, I believe he would be answerable to the local police. Also, an examiner gone postal would probably be arrested if he stepped outside the EPO's gates. However the independent sovereign status of the EPO does mean that its top-level staff can make a lot of money by escaping taxes; these advantages would be reduced if the EPO became an EU office. There is a lot of economic self-interest behind the politics.

There's a short summary of the EPO's origins and motives on the Digital Majority web site.

This has been clear for ages. See my article on Digital Majority.

Linux (and all the free software it supports) is a compelling technology that underpins huge new markets. Microsoft wants to tax these markets. It has been accumulating patents, and lobbying for software patents in Europe, and investing in Intellectual Ventures, to create the necessary tools. It has decided the time is right to move. Its strategy is to divide and conquer the Linux community, by making deals with the commercial vendors. The deals don't need to be patent deals, they just need to allow Microsoft to pump some money into the companies in question, so they become slaved to Microsoft's policies. This is a standard operating procedure for MSFT.

The real targets are the large Linux users - big business. These firms will be asked politely but with force to pay a MS tax on Linux, in the name of "interoperability" and "intellectual property". The carrot will be interoperability with Microsoft's stacks, the stick will be that wallet of "infringements".

Above all, Microsoft wants to make life hard for IBM: its fear and loathing of IBM underpins its strategy in the Linux space.

There are two big problems with Microsoft's strategy:

One, it has moved too soon and too aggressively, probably scared by the GPLv3, and has created serious anger with those large firms it's supposed to be gaining as "Linux customers".

Second, it is playing games with an industry - the patent industry - that is more evil even than Microsoft. By feeding the trolls, it's sowing the seeds of its own departure from the software business.

Three, it is forcing IBM to move to action against Microsoft. The Open Invention Network (OIN) can be seen as a direct counter to Intellectual Ventures, which although highly secretive about its investors, most likely runs on MSFT cash.

Red Hat will, IMO, eventually make a deal with Microsoft, as will Canonical. The deal won't mention patents at all, but it will come to the same: cash flowing from Microsoft to Linux vendors, in sufficient quantities that they will be forced to play nice with Microsoft's plans.

With Novell, Microsoft subsidised Novell Suse licenses. With Xandros, Microsoft is doing a deal to provide "patent covenants", which means protection being sued by Microsoft for patent claims that Microsoft has not actually specified.

The game is to knock down the commercial Linux vendors, one by one, and establish them all as clients of Microsoft's "intellectual property". You can bet that the pressure on Red Hat to settle is quite intense. First, their competitors are being subsidised. Second, their clients are being blackmailed.

I've written a more detailed analysis on this. Microsoft is using software patents to try to take ownership of GNU/Linux and all free software / open source that would be distributed along with it.

Divide and conquer. At the end, the volunteer distros will be left alone to do their work, contributing to the shiny new future, while Microsoft makes sure it gets its 10%.

GPLv3 is being seen as many in the industry as the answer. I think that's wishful thinking. The real answer here is a lawsuit from the government for abuse of monopoly power, where Microsoft is using its monopoly in the desktop area to interfere in the server OS market.

On a related tangent it seems that the Redmond astro-turfing drones are out in force, insulting RMS, calling the GPLv3 all kinds of names, claiming that "freedom" includes the right to abuse other people. Well, drones, suck it. Doesn't matter how much you scream and rant, how much your managers pay you to mess with ISO and push OOXML, Microsoft is either going to learn to "do no evil", or it's going to sink like the Titanic.

GPLv3 is a key event in Microsoft's war to divide and conquer the Free Software / Open Source community. Most of the Linux industry seems to be betting on GPLv3 to put an end to Microsoft's patent claims. My question is simply: is Microsoft sitting around scratching its head, or has it already started on the next level of play...? Are we going to see those 235 patents handed over to the community, or are we instead going to see "IP Bridges" as the next great Product to come out of Redmond?

We (the FFII) are organising a series of conferences to discuss the European patent system, and Mark Shuttleworth was our keynote speaker last week. (The conference had over thirty speakers and panelists, including Bill Kovacic, the US Federal Trade Commissioner...)

Mark spoke for 30 minutes, and his keynote is available here. He provided this very elegant argument against patents on business methods and most software: patents are society's gift to inventors in exchange for disclosure. When an invention is self-disclosing, i.e. you understand it when you use it, society has no interest in granting a patent for it, indeed is penalised by doing so, and therefore should not grant it.

More on the conference here.

• MS-Novell no defense against bad laws
• Bruce Perens Petition
• GPL vs. MS-Novell - Who is incompatible

• MS-Novell no defense against bad laws
• Bruce Perens Petition
• GPL vs. MS-Novell - Who is incompatible

• MS-Novell no defense against bad laws
• Bruce Perens Petition
• GPL vs. MS-Novell - Who is incompatible

• MS-Novell no defense against bad laws
• Bruce Perens Petition
• GPL vs. MS-Novell - Who is incompatible

Mental Peace? If Novell wanted to pay for their customers peace of mind, they should invest in softpat lobbying as Suse did. As a Suse customer the Novell deal would make me pretty nervous as I was irritated when they pushed for premature Ximian technology in Suse, esp. tainted technology such as Mono, the implementation of MS .NET which will likely infringe their patents. We have a look at Novell-MS and think back: Caldera/SCO. Novell, we don't know on what side they are or will be.

150 Millions for license deals? 15 millions for lobby campaigners and the problem will soon be gone, forever, on a worldwide scale.

Lobbying is the only way to stop the dangerous legal machinery. And it works pretty well as the European debate has shown.

And by the way: Novell-MS patent deal is no defense against bad laws

What indemnification? Digital Majority features a nice clarification: Novell-MS patent deal is no defense against bad laws

Old Suse understood that the only solution to solve the softpat mess is lobbying support. Novell gets into dangerous deals which fire heavily back, provided they were not intended to do harm to Linux or Novell's business. I know just another SuSE developer who intents to leave the company.

Patents are for inventions, not for 'innovations'.

The best approach to solve the softpat problem is lobbying against them. The approach was succesful in Europe and is much cheaper than any fishy patent agreement deals.

Maybe we need a different copyright style system for software designs. Patent law is designed for classical big industry needs, the individual inventor is a myth. No, you cannot fix patent law to serve software industry protection demands.

Unfortunately US patent reform lobbyists go fishing red herrings. Novelty, Obviousness... That is not the way to solve the softpat mess. It is a label for a patent examination test, a dogmatic test which has nothing to do with your imagination about what you think is new or obvious. The 'person skilled in the art' is a legal fiction and does not refer to you.

The problem can be solved but don't try to be smart when there is 'prior art' in patent reform. The inconvenient truth is that there is absolute no proof in economical research that the patent system works at all. That is a economist's credibility test. Most high ranking IP economists will admit it. What we further know is that in dynamic service markets patent law causes much harm. So let's talk about scope of patent law. Let's talk about governance of the patent system. Uhh, that hurts our poor patent institutions. The first step for the USA would be the application of a technical contribution test and a reform of the utility test. Then the USA, switched to first to file, could join the European Patent Convention which would help to solve a lot of problems.

I know how to fix the system. All I need is ressources.