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RMS is smart but an awful advocate. As a lobbyist he is really counter-productive and RMS is proud of it- He is bad in organisation, a lonely personal priest, nothing more.

An organisation such as FFII was able to really make a difference because of comprehensive Analysis.

There is also an US-Mailing list of FFII.

1. Get organized
2. ?????
3. Success! :-)

Tirelessly guiding, driving and pulling the european anti-software patent movement.

Without Hartmut Pilch the EU would have legalized software patents by now. Just think what that would do to Free Software...

I think, the matter is to get industry to pay EC in a try to settle.

Past investigation of Microsoft finished with exactly such a settlement

The problem in the USA is lack of organised resistance against software patents.

Perhaps we will get software patents in the EU. However this is unlikely.

I don't think software patent legislation will survive on the long run. It takes time and you have to get organised.

Anti software-patent groups in the EU should seize on this, and note how Microsoft's use of its patent portfolio is so demonstrably at odds with the public interest.

OR: Patent critics in the US shall get better organized. Join FFII US.

It's already the top news on FFII

As true as that is, you don't see the patent offices of other countries passing out patents to everybody and his dog for things that anybody with five minutes of experience in the field knows are an old hat.

This is however merely a hypothesis and most certainly not true per definition or because of some economic law. As Fritz Machlup said in the fifties, when he studied the patent system for Congress:

if we didn't have a patent system, it would be irresponsible to create one; but since we do, it would be irresponsible to get rid of it.

Therefore, just solving the non-obviousness problem and making patents easier to appeal, or going after some annoying patents like EFF is doing are not real solutions. The problem is the subject matter itself. The actions of the EFF are merely detracting from the real problem, and I would contend it may even do more harm than good. After all, they legitimise the system by saying that only annoying software patents with prior art are bad, while every software patent can be used "to steal IP" from all software authors, by forbidding him to rightfully profit from his copyright (to use a catch phrase of the other camp).

Someone who publishes something, should never have to worry about patents. The act of publishing should never constitute a patent infringement.

The real enemies are the corrupt, incompetent or short-sighted politicians and legislators who make and administrate the laws that enable such companies to behave immorally and unethically, yet perfectly legally.

In this case the corporations (or better: the "intellectual property departments" of corporations) are directly responsible. And then they start complaining about the consequences of their own actions...

The only thing that needs to be replaced is the Patent Office. So getn organized (FFII USA) and combat the legal crap.

We were surprised by the announcement of Wilhelm Hoegner and the mayor. I learnt from both only through the media.
Yet I think their message is exactly to the point.

Municipalities must assess the risk caused by software patents. Some government authorities in Sweden and the UK have already seen themselves forced to litigate against frivolous software patent claims in order to retain their freedom to do basic day-to-day business. Interestingly, in these cases there was no Linux or free software involved. Yet, it can not be denied that solutions supplied by local SMEs on the basis of free software, as envisaged by Munich's IT strategy, involve greater patent risks than a contract with a single big supplier such as IBM or Microsoft. In any case it is the normal procedure to try to assess the risk and insure it, be it through the supplier or through a separate insurance. Recent estimates from the US suggest that such a patent insurance could cost more than 100,000 eur per year. The costs would be very similar in Europe, if the Council's political agreement, for which the German government and other national governments have been fighting, became law. If, on the other hand, the European Parliament's version of the directive was adopted, the risk would drop to zero.

It is a good exercise for municipal governments to estimate patent risks in terms of insurance costs, and it would be an even better exercise for national governments to start serious assessment of the effects of legislation. No such calculation has to date been made, in spite of regular calls from Brussels to do so -- not to speak of calls from FFII to calculate the macro-economic costs of the various legislative options. The message from the Munich's mayor is therefore timely and should be heeded by other municipalities and governments, regardless of whether they plan to deploy free operating systems or not.

We were surprised by the announcement of Wilhelm Hoegner and the mayor. I learnt from both only through the media.
Yet I think their message is exactly to the point.

Municipalities must assess the risk caused by software patents. Some government authorities in Sweden and the UK have already seen themselves forced to litigate against frivolous software patent claims in order to retain their freedom to do basic day-to-day business. Interestingly, in these cases there was no Linux or free software involved. Yet, it can not be denied that solutions supplied by local SMEs on the basis of free software, as envisaged by Munich's IT strategy, involve greater patent risks than a contract with a single big supplier such as IBM or Microsoft. In any case it is the normal procedure to try to assess the risk and insure it, be it through the supplier or through a separate insurance. Recent estimates from the US suggest that such a patent insurance could cost more than 100,000 eur per year. The costs would be very similar in Europe, if the Council's political agreement, for which the German government and other national governments have been fighting, became law. If, on the other hand, the European Parliament's version of the directive was adopted, the risk would drop to zero.

It is a good exercise for municipal governments to estimate patent risks in terms of insurance costs, and it would be an even better exercise for national governments to start serious assessment of the effects of legislation. No such calculation has to date been made, in spite of regular calls from Brussels to do so -- not to speak of calls from FFII to calculate the macro-economic costs of the various legislative options. The message from the Munich's mayor is therefore timely and should be heeded by other municipalities and governments, regardless of whether they plan to deploy free operating systems or not.

I am pleased that FFII did not contribute to the Limux FUD despite the fact that a draft of a FFII supporter listing patents was involved.

Of course there is a problem with Software patents but is does not apply to Linux or Free Software in particular.

Everybody knows this from recent slashdot reports.

I think what is really needed is a FFII US to combat software patents on a global scale. Are there such organisations?

An American mailing list about the patent problem in the US can be found here.

Before you bring up some of the standard arguments in defense of software patents, please read the FAQ. There is a lot more good analysis in that section. For an easier to understand example of how software patents affect real world applications - a big reason many small businesses oppose them - look at the webshop demo.

Before you bring up some of the standard arguments in defense of software patents, please read the FAQ. There is a lot more good analysis in that section. For an easier to understand example of how software patents affect real world applications - a big reason many small businesses oppose them - look at the webshop demo.

Before you bring up some of the standard arguments in defense of software patents, please read the FAQ. There is a lot more good analysis in that section. For an easier to understand example of how software patents affect real world applications - a big reason many small businesses oppose them - look at the webshop demo.

But web services are a gray area ... Host the infringing part in India ?.

Now, anyone who knows control theory knows that this is just a simple proportional controller. The exact same control system could be patented, under a different pattent, if it was done electronically. That is, if the control was done by putting a speed sensor on the train feeding into an electronics board which controlled the valve system through a proportional gain which can be set by, say, a potentiometer in the control box. This would produce the exact same result as the flyball governor because it is the exact same control system, but done in electronics instead of mechanics.

You are basing your reasoning on the current "technical contribution" and "technical effect" doctrine/case law of the EPO. This "technical effect" should/must not have anything to do with patentability, because then indeed pretty much everything you can imagine because patentable subject matter. After all, if something does not have one effect or the other in the "real world", we would not be able to perceive it (since we are still purely physical beings, even our thoughts are physical processes).

I subscribe to the examination guidelines of the EPO as they were into force until more or less 1985. In that case, the invention in the flyball governor case is how you have to construct this flyball governor in order for it to regulate the speed of the train, i.e. the invention is your insight in how a particular combination of natural forces can be used to achieve the desired effect (i.e., a new application of the forces of nature).

In case of controller logic (either implemented in electronics or software is irrelevant, because as you noted they are functionally equivalent), a potentiometer etc, there is probably no new insight in application of natural forces. The controller logic or computer was already known, and known to be able to execute any particular kind of logic (that's how they were designed!). I assume all the components you use are already known at the time this (hypothetical in this discussion) construction is made, as are their combinations.

Unless you start meddling with the EPO's "technical contribution in the inventive step/further technical effect" stuff (which is a mess and which was purely introduced in anticipation of the scrapping of software from the exclusions of patentability, as they mention themselves; see the last red box), the only thing which is could be new and non-obvious, is the "logic/mathematics/rules of organisation". However, those are not patentable subject matter, so there is no patentable invention.

To say it in the words of the EPO:

A computer program may take various forms, e.g. an algorithm, a flow-chart or a series of coded instructions which can be recorded on a tape or other machine-readable record-medium, and can be regarded as a particular case of either a mathematical method (see above) or a presentation or information (see below). If the contribution to the known art resides solely in a computer program then the subject matter is not patentable in whatever manner it may be presented in the claims.

For example, a claim to a computer characterised by having the particular program stored in its memory or to a process for operating a computer under control of the program would be as objectionable as a claim to the program per se or the program when recorded on magnetic tape.

Even though it dates from 1978, the only outdated part in this text, is the mention of "magnetic tape".

Now, if it was done in software, i.e., ValveSetting = Gain*(TrainSpeed - SetTrainSpeed), the result would also be the same, just the "medium" of implementation would be different. So, why would the mechanical and electrical implementations be patentable but not the software implementation?

Patentability should simply not depend on "the effect" as you describe it. Patentability shou

I had to stop this project, because I cannot afford to pay an army of lawyers every time someone wants to impose conditions on my work. Software developpers react very sensitively to this kind of terrorism. If European politicians legalise software patents in Europe, that will work as a disinscentive to software production in Europe.

I can only urge you to read the study that lists the potentially infringed patents. http://www.ffii.org/~blasum/basisclient/swpatmuc.p df

Even though it is german there are a lot of patents listed in english and you will be able to see how incredibly absurd this whole thing is.

For example there are patents for:
- Tabbed Browsing
- Multitasking
- Using your browser to browse online forums
- Creating documents through macros

to just name a few.

And here's the link for us lazy folk.

The city of Munich's switching project to an open-source based infrastructure with a standardised Linux base client is eagerly watched worldwide. Meanwhile, attacks are taking place against open-source projects by means of lawsuits against important reference customers. These lawsuits are initiated by companies whose financing clearly stems from declared enemies of the open-source movement (1). We have done a patent search to reveal possible patent risks of the base client in its current form. The indicated patents can be searched at (2) and have for the most part been taken from (3). The patents mentioned below should be understood as being just examples of the 30,000 patents submitted to the European Patent Office. It may be assumed that at least 10-20% of these 30,000 patents are applicable to the client. To point at future threats, a part of patent applications have been taken into account; the acceptance rate for the European Patent Office is greater than 50% (4). In brackets, software packages of the planned base client are indicated.

[Image with a caption about the danger of JPEG and MPEG]

1. http://www.statskontoret.se/pressrum/press/2003/pr ess030915invandning.pdf
2. http://ep.espacenet.com/
3. http://swpat.ffii.org/, http://patinfo.ffii.org/, http://patdb.ffii.org/, ...
4. The average processing time for a patent application has been halved in the past 10 years and lies between 11 and 12 hours.

The city of Munich's switching project to an open-source based infrastructure with a standardised Linux base client is eagerly watched worldwide. Meanwhile, attacks are taking place against open-source projects by means of lawsuits against important reference customers. These lawsuits are initiated by companies whose financing clearly stems from declared enemies of the open-source movement (1). We have done a patent search to reveal possible patent risks of the base client in its current form. The indicated patents can be searched at (2) and have for the most part been taken from (3). The patents mentioned below should be understood as being just examples of the 30,000 patents submitted to the European Patent Office. It may be assumed that at least 10-20% of these 30,000 patents are applicable to the client. To point at future threats, a part of patent applications have been taken into account; the acceptance rate for the European Patent Office is greater than 50% (4). In brackets, software packages of the planned base client are indicated.

[Image with a caption about the danger of JPEG and MPEG]

1. http://www.statskontoret.se/pressrum/press/2003/pr ess030915invandning.pdf
2. http://ep.espacenet.com/
3. http://swpat.ffii.org/, http://patinfo.ffii.org/, http://patdb.ffii.org/, ...
4. The average processing time for a patent application has been halved in the past 10 years and lies between 11 and 12 hours.

The city of Munich's switching project to an open-source based infrastructure with a standardised Linux base client is eagerly watched worldwide. Meanwhile, attacks are taking place against open-source projects by means of lawsuits against important reference customers. These lawsuits are initiated by companies whose financing clearly stems from declared enemies of the open-source movement (1). We have done a patent search to reveal possible patent risks of the base client in its current form. The indicated patents can be searched at (2) and have for the most part been taken from (3). The patents mentioned below should be understood as being just examples of the 30,000 patents submitted to the European Patent Office. It may be assumed that at least 10-20% of these 30,000 patents are applicable to the client. To point at future threats, a part of patent applications have been taken into account; the acceptance rate for the European Patent Office is greater than 50% (4). In brackets, software packages of the planned base client are indicated.

[Image with a caption about the danger of JPEG and MPEG]

1. http://www.statskontoret.se/pressrum/press/2003/pr ess030915invandning.pdf
2. http://ep.espacenet.com/
3. http://swpat.ffii.org/, http://patinfo.ffii.org/, http://patdb.ffii.org/, ...
4. The average processing time for a patent application has been halved in the past 10 years and lies between 11 and 12 hours.

For the record, I do not think that software patents are intrinsically evil. I believe in my heart-of-hearts that algorithms are just as much an invention as a better mousetrap, and I disagree with the article author's assertion that the copyright protection granted to an implementation is sufficient protection for this inventive process.

My observation is that patents have not been a positive force in stimulating innovation at Cisco. Competition has been the motivator; bringing new products to market in a timely manner is critical. Everything we have done to create new products would have been done even if we could not obtain patents on the innovations and inventions contained in these products. I know this because no one has ever asked me "can we patent this?" before deciding whether to invest time and resources into product development.

Plus, you forget that one of the Principles of Free Software, transparency, is fundament in the patent process. The wisdom of the patent system is, In exchange for exclusive right-to-use on your invention, for a limited time, you must fully disclose that same invention.

EU software patent directive makes Munich's Unix migration difficult.

The moment Germany caved on Software Patents they ensured that free software would require licenses simply to continue to exist and be compatible with any commercial software.

Hence, any government (e.g. Munich) hoping to use open source or free software will eventually be unable to do so and still retain compatibility with common commercial software. It's a foregone conclusion.

Case in point: Samba. It's only a matter of months before Microsoft uses patents to kill Samba and all similar communications compatibility with Open Source software. How will this affect Munich?

I really do hope this brings the German delegation to the EU back to their senses, but I fear it's too late. By the way, the ffii site seems to be down. Anyone know why?

Reading that, the idea comes to mind that perhaps the only appropriate form for a software patent would be source code. No source, no patent. Might that help, do you think? It would start giving society something again...

You might want to check out this page about a third paradigm between copyright and patents. Instead of first granting a patent and then revoke it when it's bad, those proposed systems won't even grant the monopoly if it's invalid (and inherently check validity more stringent than in case of patents), and the applicant pays for bad applications.

but why are patently obvious procedures patentable?

Non-obviousness is more or less a synonym for "novelty" in patent speak. An often heard argument in that context is "if it weren't obvious, then why didn't someone else already think of it". Now how do you know whether someone else already thought of it? Again, you need some "objective" criterion, so they use the patent database, as well as written publications. They don't use published source code however, since it's not possible to datamine that efficiently (just think of how you could look through all programs out there whether one of those already uses a particular shader technique).

So first of all, if something is not a litteral combination of prior art, it's considered novel and secondly a lot of prior art is simply not looked at (e.g. because it was so simple it may have been used a lot by programmers, but no-one ever in his right mind even thought about submitting an article about it to a conference or journal).

Note that the problem of trivial patents is not even reserved to the field of software, there are tons of trivial patents in other fields as well. The patent system was simply never designed to stop trivial patents! However, it was taken for granted that the benefits of the "good" patents outweighed the bad effects of the "bad" patents.

In case of software patents, this is even less likely, however. Some nice reading on the theoretical background on why software patents are so trivial (from a European point of view), can be found here.

The bottom line is simply that the patent system is simply not fit for the monopolisation of advances in abstract logic/maths, also not when you perform them on a computer. It has little to do with whether or not the USPTO has a quality problem, although that obviously makes the situation even worse.

but why are patently obvious procedures patentable?

Non-obviousness is more or less a synonym for "novelty" in patent speak. An often heard argument in that context is "if it weren't obvious, then why didn't someone else already think of it". Now how do you know whether someone else already thought of it? Again, you need some "objective" criterion, so they use the patent database, as well as written publications. They don't use published source code however, since it's not possible to datamine that efficiently (just think of how you could look through all programs out there whether one of those already uses a particular shader technique).

So first of all, if something is not a litteral combination of prior art, it's considered novel and secondly a lot of prior art is simply not looked at (e.g. because it was so simple it may have been used a lot by programmers, but no-one ever in his right mind even thought about submitting an article about it to a conference or journal).

Note that the problem of trivial patents is not even reserved to the field of software, there are tons of trivial patents in other fields as well. The patent system was simply never designed to stop trivial patents! However, it was taken for granted that the benefits of the "good" patents outweighed the bad effects of the "bad" patents.

In case of software patents, this is even less likely, however. Some nice reading on the theoretical background on why software patents are so trivial (from a European point of view), can be found here.

The bottom line is simply that the patent system is simply not fit for the monopolisation of advances in abstract logic/maths, also not when you perform them on a computer. It has little to do with whether or not the USPTO has a quality problem, although that obviously makes the situation even worse.

• The remark about copy-and-pasting is offtopic. You should be able to distinguish between copyright and patents.
• Studies about the relationship between patents and investment in research are interesting. In the area of software patents, most show that the introduction of patents lead to a decrease in research (possibly because more expenses are needed for patent lawyers, which leads to cuts in research and development, and also because the exclusion of competitors with patent monopolies leads to less competition, which stifles the incentive for innovation), see e.g. economic study by Bessen & Hunt 2003.

Because its international?

Australia has adopted the perverted USA intelectual property manners just recently, May 18 2004 (http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us.html , http://samba.org/~tridge/fta_statement.html). Even now, if Samba were under attack, the development (if not all the developers themselves) might shift to Europe: perversion of the european patent system is still under construction, after the Episode I---The Patent Office Menace, Episode II---The Attack of the Parliament, and Episode III---The Revenge of the Council, the Episode IV---New Hope came, when the Netherlands, and afterwards also others, considered withdrawing their support to the prepared perverted directive, but the European Commission and the European Patent Office are undoubtedly going to strike back (http://ffii.org/). May be that Microsoft waits just for the European Union, may be it even postpones its attack untill the world for free software development gets yet smaller.

The real test of the global community power is yet to come, after the global power of the USA succedes in making the USA laws actually global.

If elsewhere in Europe (where legislation is hot), here are some mailing lists.

If elsewhere in Europe (where legislation is hot), here are some mailing lists.

Microsoft was late to hop on the software patent bandwagon, but this is changing now.

Do you hear about IBM threatening small companies all the time using (software) patents? No. Does that mean they don't do that? Hell, no!

Well, CEOs of both companies can subscribe to FFII US

http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl

and help them to combat the software patent nightmare. Unfortunately it was the BSA that lobbies for software patent law.

I don't believe in benefits of software patents for megacorporations, for me patent law in the field of software just reflects the interests of a patent attorney. Ever economist knows that patent law is crap in some field, no developer needs them.

It will be cheaper for them to contribute a donation for FFII or support their work than to pay money for patent trolls.

Well, CEOs of both companies can subscribe to FFII US

http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl

and help them to combat the software patent nightmare. Unfortunately it was the BSA that lobbies for software patent law.

I don't believe in benefits of software patents for megacorporations, for me patent law in the field of software just reflects the interests of a patent attorney. Ever economist knows that patent law is crap in some field, no developer needs them.

It will be cheaper for them to contribute a donation for FFII or support their work than to pay money for patent trolls.

You've provided a lot of interesting links. I need to read and digest them before responding (I mean we are having one of the most intellectual discourse I've seen here on /., so I'm not going to muck it up by just blasting off another post). However...

first-to-market is great, but you still have to fight it out. Copyright buys you virtually nothing (even the SSRN article you provided echoes this) and trade secret doesn't buy you much because you would have to show that your competitor stole your trade secret. If they came up with it clean-room, you've got nothing on them. Combining them doesn't help much.

Therefore, the time necessary to reverse engineer it, re-implement it, integrate it in your application and test it will take quite a lot of time (possibly even as much as the original implementors). The reverse engineering component is (virtually) non-existent in case of e.g. business methods and interface elements, but that immediately demonstrates how the "disclosure value" of such patents is (virtually) non-existent either: using the technique is the same as publishing how it works, so there is no reason for society to grant a monopoly for it. Companies love it of course, since they more or less get something (a monopoly) for nothing (a publication that they were going to do anyway).

Nevertheless, even of those people who think patents are completely unsuitable for monopolising software-related innovations, there are some who think that the protection offered by copyright is not strong/deep enough for things like very complex algorithms. Some alternatives are discussed here.

Like I said, I need to read what you posted before trying to reply. It would do neither side any good if I really responded beforehand.

The result is that those two classes keep claiming, against all evidence to the contrary, that software patents are indispensable for economic growth and that without them, the end of the world is near. Other proponents are patent offices (they get their income from granting patents) and parasite companies like EOLAS (they don't make any products, they just buy some patents and then go around suing everyone to extract money).

The problem is that it's very hard for many people to understand that the, at first sight logical, rule that "more patents = always better" is a fallacy, as even a VP of IBM admitted. There is also a downside to having more patents in the system, and the balance is completely lost...

The people -I- sent to Brussels didn't.

The EU Council voted yes on SW patents. They are representatives of the EU governments, not of the people.
The people's representatives is the parliament, they did vote in support of SW patents too, but with some MAJOR amendments. Basically all the FFII-supported amendments passed.

I'm certainly against SW patents, but I don't feel any public trust was violated in that particular decision in my case. The government of my country is pro-SW patents. And I didn't vote for them.

You still haven't answered the question of when innovation actually gets hindered.

Is there any evidence that innovation in software is being hindered by patents?

OSes, server applications, programming languages and environments, user interfaces, network protocols, security infrastructure, and other areas seem to be improving as fast as ever

And then there's the problem with patent thickets, the fact that software patents pretty much nullify most protection an author gets from copyright (one software patent can completely forbid you from exercising your author's right), the inherent problem of trivial patents, legal uncertainty, ...

In fact, the only time I've seen a patent cause real trouble is in KDE, where some people attempted to blatantly copy a Mac OS feature only to find it was patented. In this case the patent worked as intended.

Keep in mind that patent law is not a law designed to allow innovators to rightfully profit from their work. This is in contrast with copyright, where there is a moral right associated with the creative work of an author. Patent law is merely an economic law, and is supposed to be only applied if it results in a general benefit to society (after all, it's society that grants a monopoly, so it's only in the interest of society to do that if society will benefit from it, be it under the form of more innovation, better economic situation, ...).

You still haven't answered the question of when innovation actually gets hindered.

Is there any evidence that innovation in software is being hindered by patents?

OSes, server applications, programming languages and environments, user interfaces, network protocols, security infrastructure, and other areas seem to be improving as fast as ever

And then there's the problem with patent thickets, the fact that software patents pretty much nullify most protection an author gets from copyright (one software patent can completely forbid you from exercising your author's right), the inherent problem of trivial patents, legal uncertainty, ...

In fact, the only time I've seen a patent cause real trouble is in KDE, where some people attempted to blatantly copy a Mac OS feature only to find it was patented. In this case the patent worked as intended.

Keep in mind that patent law is not a law designed to allow innovators to rightfully profit from their work. This is in contrast with copyright, where there is a moral right associated with the creative work of an author. Patent law is merely an economic law, and is supposed to be only applied if it results in a general benefit to society (after all, it's society that grants a monopoly, so it's only in the interest of society to do that if society will benefit from it, be it under the form of more innovation, better economic situation, ...).

Alternatives, which do take into account this problem, are presented here. Basically, you present the problem you have solved, claim it is really non-obvious, promise to give anyone who solves it within a month $5000 and if nobody can, then you get your monopoly.

This solves several problems of the patent system: filing for monopolies on trivial things is very much discouraged and people who spend time invalidating stupid applications get automatically reimbursed for their work.

You should have a look at Richard Stallman's talk about patents, it is far more informative than this article, and also the presented books.

If not, you can read the speech he gave in Cambridge 2002

This is just an overview of some ideas that have been pinging around slashdot and several other communities for a while.

I have started to look at this subject fairly recently after I've heard of the problems with European parliament considering adopting a legislation similar to that in the US.

I am more interested with research that claims that software patents are altogether a different thing. Reasons are: a complex software system may rely on thousands patentable technologies. Simply verifying all these possibilities is an enormous task. In comparison, a GoreTex(TM) jacket seems to depend on a handful(if not just a single) patent. While GoreTex patent seems to support innovation, another patent seems to be a menace.

This is just an overview of some ideas that have been pinging around slashdot and several other communities for a while.

I have started to look at this subject fairly recently after I've heard of the problems with European parliament considering adopting a legislation similar to that in the US.

I am more interested with research that claims that software patents are altogether a different thing. Reasons are: a complex software system may rely on thousands patentable technologies. Simply verifying all these possibilities is an enormous task. In comparison, a GoreTex(TM) jacket seems to depend on a handful(if not just a single) patent. While GoreTex patent seems to support innovation, another patent seems to be a menace.

1. While software patents aren't strictly legal in Europe, they are easily implemented anyway. This is done using a number of techniques including wrapping them up in 'technical processes' which are perfectly legal. There are currently a huge number of software patents that exist in Europe that have been implemented this way.

There are indeed already more than 30,000 European software patents in the mean time, including these ones. Whether or not they are legal can only be determined by a court. In some countries, such as the UK, courts generally accept software patents. In other countries, such as Germany (although this has been changing lately) they aren't. In still other countries, such as the Netherlands, people haven't even ever tried to enforce a software patent.

2. Of the ones that can't be wrapped up in this method, a large number of patents are set-up and currently pending the highly expected change in the law.

Absolutely. FWIW, they tried to change it before as well, without a directive (by directly changing the European Patent Convention and removing the exception for "computer programs as such"). However, that failed, so they started the directive project.

3. Everyone I spoke to was perfectly confident that software patents would eventually be implemented in line with the US. The European economy would be dependant on this in the long term.

It's bullshit that the European economy requires software patents. See this page for a list of economic studies suggesting the contrary. I'd be very impressed if anyone could produce a similarly sized list of economic studies suggesting that software patents are good for the economy.

Also, the law change would not be retrospective so all previously used inventions (but not the ones currently pending) will be public domain.

That's also bullshit. The directive is about the enforceability of patents, not about the granting requirements. It's simple to verify: if the above were true, why would all those big companies be whining that the EP's version threatens to invalidate their software patents, while the Council's version keeps them valid?

4. They were all very aware of the 'open source crowd' and sympathised with their cause.

Keep in mind that "the open source crowd" is not the only, and not even the biggest, opponent of software patents. They are the most vocal one, though.

They explained that if the law was changed, it would only prevent the open source crowd from copying other software and would not limit them from innovating.

Copying is prohibited by copyright. Patents also apply if you discovered something completely on your own, but which was previously patented by someone else. Patents have absolutely nothing to do with copying. In fact, since most patents are in the hands of large companies, they can use those often to threaten smaller companies and as such be able to buy those out quite cheaply (thus "stealing" intellectual property from small companies which are virtually defenseless in a world dominated by software patents).

However, when I mentioned the Microsoft 'double click' patent, they all laughed out loud and warned me these things were usually a thousand times more complicated and subtle than I had been led to believe.

Bullshit. It's true that in case of the Microsoft "double click" patent, that patent does not cover plain double clicking. But it's not "a thousand times more complicated and subtle" then you were led to believe. They are often worded in such a way, but in reality the "limitations" in those wordings mean squat.

Example: the aforementioned MS patent only applies to "limited resource computing devices". However, I s

1. While software patents aren't strictly legal in Europe, they are easily implemented anyway. This is done using a number of techniques including wrapping them up in 'technical processes' which are perfectly legal. There are currently a huge number of software patents that exist in Europe that have been implemented this way.

There are indeed already more than 30,000 European software patents in the mean time, including these ones. Whether or not they are legal can only be determined by a court. In some countries, such as the UK, courts generally accept software patents. In other countries, such as Germany (although this has been changing lately) they aren't. In still other countries, such as the Netherlands, people haven't even ever tried to enforce a software patent.

2. Of the ones that can't be wrapped up in this method, a large number of patents are set-up and currently pending the highly expected change in the law.

Absolutely. FWIW, they tried to change it before as well, without a directive (by directly changing the European Patent Convention and removing the exception for "computer programs as such"). However, that failed, so they started the directive project.

3. Everyone I spoke to was perfectly confident that software patents would eventually be implemented in line with the US. The European economy would be dependant on this in the long term.

It's bullshit that the European economy requires software patents. See this page for a list of economic studies suggesting the contrary. I'd be very impressed if anyone could produce a similarly sized list of economic studies suggesting that software patents are good for the economy.

Also, the law change would not be retrospective so all previously used inventions (but not the ones currently pending) will be public domain.

That's also bullshit. The directive is about the enforceability of patents, not about the granting requirements. It's simple to verify: if the above were true, why would all those big companies be whining that the EP's version threatens to invalidate their software patents, while the Council's version keeps them valid?

4. They were all very aware of the 'open source crowd' and sympathised with their cause.

Keep in mind that "the open source crowd" is not the only, and not even the biggest, opponent of software patents. They are the most vocal one, though.

They explained that if the law was changed, it would only prevent the open source crowd from copying other software and would not limit them from innovating.

Copying is prohibited by copyright. Patents also apply if you discovered something completely on your own, but which was previously patented by someone else. Patents have absolutely nothing to do with copying. In fact, since most patents are in the hands of large companies, they can use those often to threaten smaller companies and as such be able to buy those out quite cheaply (thus "stealing" intellectual property from small companies which are virtually defenseless in a world dominated by software patents).

However, when I mentioned the Microsoft 'double click' patent, they all laughed out loud and warned me these things were usually a thousand times more complicated and subtle than I had been led to believe.

Bullshit. It's true that in case of the Microsoft "double click" patent, that patent does not cover plain double clicking. But it's not "a thousand times more complicated and subtle" then you were led to believe. They are often worded in such a way, but in reality the "limitations" in those wordings mean squat.

Example: the aforementioned MS patent only applies to "limited resource computing devices". However, I s

I think patents aid innovation.

I'd be curious to know whether you would support the kind of interoperability exception contained in article 6a of the EU parliament's (amended, anti-swpat) version of the software patent directive? If so, you might want to support or donate to the FFII anyway, because they played a key role in getting the parliament to vote for that.