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On the web server this may be true. In Germany it is even > 89% Apache.

But Microsoft still is strong in the Desktop market. Soon KDE 3.2 will be released and as Linux quickly matures on the desktop I don't see a reason why it will not be the default plattform in the enterprise desktop market.

Only software patents can stop Linux now, but today software patents and patent privateers harm Microsoft (eolas, SPX ecc.). But Microsoft performs well in the armsraise.

Sure, Microsoft will die away. It's only a matter of time.

Found this in Lawrence Lessig's blog discussions:

Software Patents in Action

- an ominous coward

He couldn't - hyperlinking had been patented (slashdot article) by British Telecom in 1976.

A note of clarification: Software patents are legal in the United States, illegal pretty much everywhere else, but are nevertheless sometimes granted anyway in the EU. If you're in the EU and want to fight, click here.

Regardless of the eventual European stance on software patents, manufacturers would still be hit by the patent when marketing in US or Japan.

This smells fishy already... Apparently the parliament rapporteur is none else than the infamous Arlene McArthy (of Europen Softwre Patents fame). And she's already making propositions to have the Agency support TCPA / "Secure Computing" stuff...

Check it here...

The European version can be found here . Looks identical at first sight, though I did not compare all the claims word for word yet. Another great patent waiting to be legalised. Act now!

The real question is how to fix the patent system. IBM (ie. PA Fritz Teufel) pressures for EU software patents. up to now they were successfully defeated. However, in order to gain ground we have to expand the European Campaign to the USA. And there it is up to you, create an initiative that puts pressure on the patent system with assistance of your FTC.

We can support you, bring the software patent war home!

http://www.noepatents.org
http://wiki.ael.be
http://swpat.ffii.org
http://softwarepatents.co.uk

I would also like to remind you of UN World summit Of the Information Society. It may be the right place to raise the issue.

I remind you IBM delivered Hollerith tabulators that were used in nazi concentration camps.

IBM Patent attorney Fritz Teufel is a key person in the EU campaign FOR software patents. See also this article

I remind you IBM delivered Hollerith tabulators that were used in nazi concentration camps.

IBM Patent attorney Fritz Teufel is a key person in the EU campaign FOR software patents. See also this article

Not only here on Slashdot, but here, and here. too.

The ignorance of the FFII and EFF about software patents is simply astonishing. I've talked to some of these people about their views on patents. Amusing. It's like talking to the Taliban about the importance of women's rights.

Although that statement is true, that does not mean that the European Patent Office hasn't granted patents on business methods!

See for example the following Amazon patent on Gift Ordering.

This is the reason big (American) companies, Bolkenstein and the JURI committee are so actively lobbying to get patent law "harmonized" in all of Europe. At the moment some national judges correctly throw out any patent claims based on these illegally granted patents against smaller businesses, but not all European national judges know that the current European Patent Act disallows the European Patent Office from granting these papers. Some fall for official looking patent papers with a nice EU Patent Office stamp on them! Which way do you think the big companies, who hold almost these illegally granted patents, want the law to be harmonized...

Please follow the European patent discussion through http://swpat.ffii.org/. We might have "won the last battle", "the war" is still ongoing!

Although that statement is true, that does not mean that the European Patent Office hasn't granted patents on business methods!

See for example the following Amazon patent on Gift Ordering.

This is the reason big (American) companies, Bolkenstein and the JURI committee are so actively lobbying to get patent law "harmonized" in all of Europe. At the moment some national judges correctly throw out any patent claims based on these illegally granted patents against smaller businesses, but not all European national judges know that the current European Patent Act disallows the European Patent Office from granting these papers. Some fall for official looking patent papers with a nice EU Patent Office stamp on them! Which way do you think the big companies, who hold almost these illegally granted patents, want the law to be harmonized...

Please follow the European patent discussion through http://swpat.ffii.org/. We might have "won the last battle", "the war" is still ongoing!

The lawyers dictate the law.

You'd better talk to your department of Justice now or ask the ministers of economy to put pressure on the justice ministers. Also for parliamentary initiatives is now the right time.

The council of ministers will decide on nov 10th. They are not bound by the EU parliament's decision as national governments are only accountable to the parliament. And the uk is likely to push for a horribel proposal. Note: now the government groups themselves decide about this issue.

Take a look at FFII UK's call for action and adapt it like the German Gnus did.
Or write your own call for action.

You can track the latest news on this issue via AEL wiki. And there are national European FFII mailing lists, for instance for denmark dk-parl@ffii.org (Mailman Interface)

But technically this isn't impressive. I worked on programs that did full-text document searches about 20 years ago, and they weren't new then. So simply doing full-text searches in documents is just no big deal. But what about the large number of books, you say? Actually, that's nothing more than what they already do. I believe the scale of website text far exceeds the scale of the book text that they can search. The Wikipedia is simply one of millions of sites, and it has a whole encyclopedia. So, they can simply use their existing schemes that examine websites to examine books as well. I am impressed with Google's ability to manage web searches, but compared to that, book searching is no big deal. It's a very minor extension to what they already do.

Is it patentable? They can probably send in paperwork and get a piece of paper, since the wheel and patterns for swinging on a swing have already been granted patents. Patenting in many countries has become simply a registration process, even though the law says otherwise. Software patents are particularly egregious. But does this basic idea meet the legal requirements of a patent? No. The idea of searching the full text of books - and technology to do it - has been around for decades. If they've done something truly original to handle the scale, then maybe, but as of yet I don't see any evidence of that. Perhaps the evidence of something original and not obvious will come.

I like to hear about major new innovations - I even have a paper on software innovations. But not everything has to be a breathtaking new innovation to be useful. If it's useful, then let's say "thank you" and/or use it, without demanding that it represent a revolutionary change in technology. Some of the things that have most changed our lives aren't radical new ideas, but instead are things that made pre-existing ideas easier or cheaper to use.

The European Commission is completely undemocratic and some also say, it's corrupt(look for subsies in the articles).

"The Commission might be prepared to support a revision of the Munich Convention to improve it and to make it clear that computer programmes are no longer excluded from patent protection."

John Mogg, Director General of DG XV (Internal Market and Financial Services), European Commission

There are also MEPs, especially in the JURI committee(a commitee of lawers) which only saw this from the law view and not from the political view and stayer very much on the patent office view, except for one amendment, the interoperability amendment.

But fortunately, the parliament consists of 625 members from all member states and the patent family didn't convince enough of them to close eyes and send this thing thru. This is where the power lies. We the people of europe, have the power to speak with our local representative and they have the power of their vote, and they excercised it on September 24th.

In this very moment, the European Parliament has demostrated that it is a absolutely democratic institution which takes care of their constitutionents and does not follow special interest groups alone - if they have the backing of the people in doing so. So write your MPs and tell them that tell them what you see.

And if you think the power to elect our representatives is not sufficient because they don't hear us, we have the right to demonstrate and we did it in Brussels, Strasbourg, Munich, Berlin, Stuttgart and Vienna!. This is what makes us really heard if you feel your MP is not listening. Subscribe to the mailing lists and come to the next demonstration or organize one with your Linux user group if you are upset about not being heard!

Your governments will be represented at the November 10th meeting and at the preparation meeting in 4 days time. Make sure they know what you want them to do.

You should probably join the relevant mailing lists for country-specific information. They're listed here along with a long list of other stuff to do.

Hopefully, the European Parliament will be able to see through the dis-information spread by the FFII, the Eurolinux something or other, and pass meaningful legislation this time.

This forces those people to talk only about generalities and how much the industry depends on patents on "computer-implemented inventions", but they can never give any specific example. They are screaming bloody murder about the amendments voted by the European Parliament, but they have not yet given even one example of a patent on a "computer-implemented invention" (which is not a software patent) that will be invalidated by those amendments.

If they would outright admit they were pro-software patents, at least it would be possible to discuss with them about whether or not those are good for the economy, innovation and society at large. Right now, the discussion often gets stuck at finding the imaginary difference between "pure software" and a "computer-implemented invention".

No, patents can be extended from one country to another.
The EPO already granted a patent on one of the two parts of the Amazon one-click shopping patent.

The problem is, we don't seem to have that choice. The only way I can see to stop the patent offices from granting patents for every trivial thing they feel like is to be very firm that no software may be patented at all.

The patent lawyers are constantly trying to extend their remit. Already, the European Patent Office has granted about 30,000 software patents - against the spirit and letter of the existing law.

I believe that the decision about what software deserves protection should be under the control of a wide range of computer professionals, not a narrow group of lawyers. But that would be the best case scenario. The only way we're ever going to get there is if we first abolish this worst case scenario of software patent ubiquity.

Letting patent lawyers decide what should be patented - is like letting generals decide when to go to war.

Exactly!

The only difference is that while the generals in all civilized countries would also agree that it would be a seriously bad idea to let the "experts" decide instead of the democratically elected institutions, there are plenty of patent lawyers that openly argue that the field of patent law should be above the reach of the democratic process, and should be dictated by the patent lawyers themselves.

I wrote a reply to one patent lawyer who was expressing that idea, and repost it here:

Democracy may not be so bad after all

In the ZDNet article Software patent limits 'go to far' , legal expert Alex Batteson argues that although "it may seem undemocratic", the outcome of the recent European Parliament vote on software patents proves that the issue is too complex to be handled by the parliament, and should have been left to the experts.

While I agree with Mr. Batteson that the issue of software patents is far too complex to be handed over to the European Parliament in the manner that it was, I still have to disagree with him when he suggests that the matter should be handled by the patent lawyers instead.

I have just spent an entire day going through the amendments that the European Parliament made to the resolution before adopting it, just to form my own opinion as to whether FFII, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, really has a leg to stand on when it describes the resolution as a victory for the opponents of software patents. As I am neither a lawyer nor a politician, but merely a programmer and citizen, I wouldn't really have gained much insight by just reading through the resolution as is. Instead, I went through the amendments one by one and checked what the FFII had said on each issue before the vote, and what they said afterwards.

After having gone through this process, I am now prepared to agree with the FFII that the adopted resolution is indeed a victory, and that it is a good thing that it passed, but like I said, it took me a day of reading just to reach this conclusion.

It is quite obvious that it was completely unreasonable to expect the parliament members, who would normally neither be programmers nor patent lawyers, to vote together a consistent legislative proposal in a plenary session lasting less than an hour, squeezed in between a resolution about the situation in Iraq, a proposal on European energy taxation, and a statement on the fisheries agreement with Mauritius. I think that the fact that they nevertheless managed to put together a good resolution does them great credit, and shows that many of them must have realised that this is an issue that deserves to be taken seriously.

But how did it come to this?

Well, this is where I have to disagree with Mr. Batteson's position, and state that I prefer the democratic road, despite all its shortcomings. While it is doubtlessly true that a group of patent lawyers working behind closed doors would have come up with a legislative resolution that was technically much more consistent, it would have been a resolution with radically differen

Letting patent lawyers decide what should be patented - is like letting generals decide when to go to war.

Exactly!

The only difference is that while the generals in all civilized countries would also agree that it would be a seriously bad idea to let the "experts" decide instead of the democratically elected institutions, there are plenty of patent lawyers that openly argue that the field of patent law should be above the reach of the democratic process, and should be dictated by the patent lawyers themselves.

I wrote a reply to one patent lawyer who was expressing that idea, and repost it here:

Democracy may not be so bad after all

In the ZDNet article Software patent limits 'go to far' , legal expert Alex Batteson argues that although "it may seem undemocratic", the outcome of the recent European Parliament vote on software patents proves that the issue is too complex to be handled by the parliament, and should have been left to the experts.

While I agree with Mr. Batteson that the issue of software patents is far too complex to be handed over to the European Parliament in the manner that it was, I still have to disagree with him when he suggests that the matter should be handled by the patent lawyers instead.

I have just spent an entire day going through the amendments that the European Parliament made to the resolution before adopting it, just to form my own opinion as to whether FFII, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, really has a leg to stand on when it describes the resolution as a victory for the opponents of software patents. As I am neither a lawyer nor a politician, but merely a programmer and citizen, I wouldn't really have gained much insight by just reading through the resolution as is. Instead, I went through the amendments one by one and checked what the FFII had said on each issue before the vote, and what they said afterwards.

After having gone through this process, I am now prepared to agree with the FFII that the adopted resolution is indeed a victory, and that it is a good thing that it passed, but like I said, it took me a day of reading just to reach this conclusion.

It is quite obvious that it was completely unreasonable to expect the parliament members, who would normally neither be programmers nor patent lawyers, to vote together a consistent legislative proposal in a plenary session lasting less than an hour, squeezed in between a resolution about the situation in Iraq, a proposal on European energy taxation, and a statement on the fisheries agreement with Mauritius. I think that the fact that they nevertheless managed to put together a good resolution does them great credit, and shows that many of them must have realised that this is an issue that deserves to be taken seriously.

But how did it come to this?

Well, this is where I have to disagree with Mr. Batteson's position, and state that I prefer the democratic road, despite all its shortcomings. While it is doubtlessly true that a group of patent lawyers working behind closed doors would have come up with a legislative resolution that was technically much more consistent, it would have been a resolution with radically differen

Letting patent lawyers decide what should be patented - is like letting generals decide when to go to war.

Exactly!

The only difference is that while the generals in all civilized countries would also agree that it would be a seriously bad idea to let the "experts" decide instead of the democratically elected institutions, there are plenty of patent lawyers that openly argue that the field of patent law should be above the reach of the democratic process, and should be dictated by the patent lawyers themselves.

I wrote a reply to one patent lawyer who was expressing that idea, and repost it here:

Democracy may not be so bad after all

In the ZDNet article Software patent limits 'go to far' , legal expert Alex Batteson argues that although "it may seem undemocratic", the outcome of the recent European Parliament vote on software patents proves that the issue is too complex to be handled by the parliament, and should have been left to the experts.

While I agree with Mr. Batteson that the issue of software patents is far too complex to be handed over to the European Parliament in the manner that it was, I still have to disagree with him when he suggests that the matter should be handled by the patent lawyers instead.

I have just spent an entire day going through the amendments that the European Parliament made to the resolution before adopting it, just to form my own opinion as to whether FFII, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, really has a leg to stand on when it describes the resolution as a victory for the opponents of software patents. As I am neither a lawyer nor a politician, but merely a programmer and citizen, I wouldn't really have gained much insight by just reading through the resolution as is. Instead, I went through the amendments one by one and checked what the FFII had said on each issue before the vote, and what they said afterwards.

After having gone through this process, I am now prepared to agree with the FFII that the adopted resolution is indeed a victory, and that it is a good thing that it passed, but like I said, it took me a day of reading just to reach this conclusion.

It is quite obvious that it was completely unreasonable to expect the parliament members, who would normally neither be programmers nor patent lawyers, to vote together a consistent legislative proposal in a plenary session lasting less than an hour, squeezed in between a resolution about the situation in Iraq, a proposal on European energy taxation, and a statement on the fisheries agreement with Mauritius. I think that the fact that they nevertheless managed to put together a good resolution does them great credit, and shows that many of them must have realised that this is an issue that deserves to be taken seriously.

But how did it come to this?

Well, this is where I have to disagree with Mr. Batteson's position, and state that I prefer the democratic road, despite all its shortcomings. While it is doubtlessly true that a group of patent lawyers working behind closed doors would have come up with a legislative resolution that was technically much more consistent, it would have been a resolution with radically differen

This may be the best opportunity left for you to prevent software patents in your own country

The United States Patent Office and the Japanese Patent Office have already achieved their goal of software patents in their own countries. The European Patent Office (supported by all the European national patent offices) is the third partner in the Trilateral Commission, and if it is able to legalize software patents in Europe, each partner will have a very strong position of apparent international legitimacy from which to fight any backlash in their own regions.

And then, rest of the World, watch out.

Between them, these 3 regions have a massive amount of economic power, and they will push the rest of the World to follow their lead on the software patent issue. This will be done through the world trade and intellectual property organizations (WTO and WIPO), where the countries on the receiving end of this pressure will probably concede the issue, given that they have more important issues to fight about (such as farming subsidies). Not that they'd necessarily want to fight it, since most governments' advisers on the subject (patent lawyers) are generally strongly in favour of extensions to patentability anyway.

So, the best remaining opportunity for you to remove or prevent software patenting in your own country may be to help fight it in Europe. If you are not European, you obviously don't have any direct say in our democratic processes, but you could still give secondary support. I guess the best way would be donating your time and money to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. Here are the links:

• Donate time to the FFII (long list of things to be done; translations, technical work, mirroring, adopting patents. Or just sign up to the mailing lists and offer general help)
• Donate money to the FFII (Click on the Pay Pal link)

But if you don't think it's right for outsiders to interfere in other countries' political processes, tell that to the BSA (which drafted the original directive proposal), and the US Government (which didn't like the proposed amendments). And when they ignore you, come on and help the good guys.

P.S. I don't speak for the FFII, I just don't want to see software patents (generally unfair restrictions on people's right to write and distribute their own software) seriously harm computing all around the World.

P.P.S If you are an EU citizen, make sure your government knows what you want it to do at that November 10th meeting.

This may be the best opportunity left for you to prevent software patents in your own country

The United States Patent Office and the Japanese Patent Office have already achieved their goal of software patents in their own countries. The European Patent Office (supported by all the European national patent offices) is the third partner in the Trilateral Commission, and if it is able to legalize software patents in Europe, each partner will have a very strong position of apparent international legitimacy from which to fight any backlash in their own regions.

And then, rest of the World, watch out.

Between them, these 3 regions have a massive amount of economic power, and they will push the rest of the World to follow their lead on the software patent issue. This will be done through the world trade and intellectual property organizations (WTO and WIPO), where the countries on the receiving end of this pressure will probably concede the issue, given that they have more important issues to fight about (such as farming subsidies). Not that they'd necessarily want to fight it, since most governments' advisers on the subject (patent lawyers) are generally strongly in favour of extensions to patentability anyway.

So, the best remaining opportunity for you to remove or prevent software patenting in your own country may be to help fight it in Europe. If you are not European, you obviously don't have any direct say in our democratic processes, but you could still give secondary support. I guess the best way would be donating your time and money to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. Here are the links:

• Donate time to the FFII (long list of things to be done; translations, technical work, mirroring, adopting patents. Or just sign up to the mailing lists and offer general help)
• Donate money to the FFII (Click on the Pay Pal link)

But if you don't think it's right for outsiders to interfere in other countries' political processes, tell that to the BSA (which drafted the original directive proposal), and the US Government (which didn't like the proposed amendments). And when they ignore you, come on and help the good guys.

P.S. I don't speak for the FFII, I just don't want to see software patents (generally unfair restrictions on people's right to write and distribute their own software) seriously harm computing all around the World.

P.P.S If you are an EU citizen, make sure your government knows what you want it to do at that November 10th meeting.

This may be the best opportunity left for you to prevent software patents in your own country

The United States Patent Office and the Japanese Patent Office have already achieved their goal of software patents in their own countries. The European Patent Office (supported by all the European national patent offices) is the third partner in the Trilateral Commission, and if it is able to legalize software patents in Europe, each partner will have a very strong position of apparent international legitimacy from which to fight any backlash in their own regions.

And then, rest of the World, watch out.

Between them, these 3 regions have a massive amount of economic power, and they will push the rest of the World to follow their lead on the software patent issue. This will be done through the world trade and intellectual property organizations (WTO and WIPO), where the countries on the receiving end of this pressure will probably concede the issue, given that they have more important issues to fight about (such as farming subsidies). Not that they'd necessarily want to fight it, since most governments' advisers on the subject (patent lawyers) are generally strongly in favour of extensions to patentability anyway.

So, the best remaining opportunity for you to remove or prevent software patenting in your own country may be to help fight it in Europe. If you are not European, you obviously don't have any direct say in our democratic processes, but you could still give secondary support. I guess the best way would be donating your time and money to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. Here are the links:

• Donate time to the FFII (long list of things to be done; translations, technical work, mirroring, adopting patents. Or just sign up to the mailing lists and offer general help)
• Donate money to the FFII (Click on the Pay Pal link)

But if you don't think it's right for outsiders to interfere in other countries' political processes, tell that to the BSA (which drafted the original directive proposal), and the US Government (which didn't like the proposed amendments). And when they ignore you, come on and help the good guys.

P.S. I don't speak for the FFII, I just don't want to see software patents (generally unfair restrictions on people's right to write and distribute their own software) seriously harm computing all around the World.

P.P.S If you are an EU citizen, make sure your government knows what you want it to do at that November 10th meeting.

This may be the best opportunity left for you to prevent software patents in your own country

The United States Patent Office and the Japanese Patent Office have already achieved their goal of software patents in their own countries. The European Patent Office (supported by all the European national patent offices) is the third partner in the Trilateral Commission, and if it is able to legalize software patents in Europe, each partner will have a very strong position of apparent international legitimacy from which to fight any backlash in their own regions.

And then, rest of the World, watch out.

Between them, these 3 regions have a massive amount of economic power, and they will push the rest of the World to follow their lead on the software patent issue. This will be done through the world trade and intellectual property organizations (WTO and WIPO), where the countries on the receiving end of this pressure will probably concede the issue, given that they have more important issues to fight about (such as farming subsidies). Not that they'd necessarily want to fight it, since most governments' advisers on the subject (patent lawyers) are generally strongly in favour of extensions to patentability anyway.

So, the best remaining opportunity for you to remove or prevent software patenting in your own country may be to help fight it in Europe. If you are not European, you obviously don't have any direct say in our democratic processes, but you could still give secondary support. I guess the best way would be donating your time and money to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. Here are the links:

• Donate time to the FFII (long list of things to be done; translations, technical work, mirroring, adopting patents. Or just sign up to the mailing lists and offer general help)
• Donate money to the FFII (Click on the Pay Pal link)

But if you don't think it's right for outsiders to interfere in other countries' political processes, tell that to the BSA (which drafted the original directive proposal), and the US Government (which didn't like the proposed amendments). And when they ignore you, come on and help the good guys.

P.S. I don't speak for the FFII, I just don't want to see software patents (generally unfair restrictions on people's right to write and distribute their own software) seriously harm computing all around the World.

P.P.S If you are an EU citizen, make sure your government knows what you want it to do at that November 10th meeting.

Considering that mechanical realisations of software can be constructed, I see little point in "battling" them, as they're fully tangible, patentable ideas.

The problem is that the European Patent Office EPO (which is funded by the fees that patent applicants pay, and therefore stands to benefit directly if more and more things can and do get patented) has adopted a praxis of accepting software patents anyway (and collecting the registration and renewal fees for them). At present, however, the value of these illegally granted patents is dubious, since there is no guarantee that the relevant courts would decide to uphold them if they were challenged, and the patent owners have mostly been (understandably) reluctant to let push come to shove for that reason.

If a European Directive that sanctions the current EPO practice would come into force, however, this would quite likely change, and European small and medium sized businesses would find themselves in the same legal minefield that their American counterparts already are.

It is for this reason that the pro-software-patent lobby is trying to push for a directive that would be good for patent lawyers and bad for people who actually make software, and it is for this reason that there is all the point in the world to be battling for a good directive that reinstates Article 52 into practice and leaves Europe free of software patents.

And since the legislative process is under way at this very moment, there is all the point in the world to do that battling right now.

Considering that mechanical realisations of software can be constructed, I see little point in "battling" them, as they're fully tangible, patentable ideas.

The problem is that the European Patent Office EPO (which is funded by the fees that patent applicants pay, and therefore stands to benefit directly if more and more things can and do get patented) has adopted a praxis of accepting software patents anyway (and collecting the registration and renewal fees for them). At present, however, the value of these illegally granted patents is dubious, since there is no guarantee that the relevant courts would decide to uphold them if they were challenged, and the patent owners have mostly been (understandably) reluctant to let push come to shove for that reason.

If a European Directive that sanctions the current EPO practice would come into force, however, this would quite likely change, and European small and medium sized businesses would find themselves in the same legal minefield that their American counterparts already are.

It is for this reason that the pro-software-patent lobby is trying to push for a directive that would be good for patent lawyers and bad for people who actually make software, and it is for this reason that there is all the point in the world to be battling for a good directive that reinstates Article 52 into practice and leaves Europe free of software patents.

And since the legislative process is under way at this very moment, there is all the point in the world to do that battling right now.

The European Commission is horrendously corrupt, because it is largely unaccountable.

It typically promotes Software patents, or anything else which rewards parasitic MBAs instead of people who do actual work, so this pulling of funding could be an example of its corruption.

See what Fritz Bolkestein has to say about software patents.

See, he's a complete asshat. Fortunately, he's a complete asshat outside the software patents issue too, so the fact he's for software patents has made a lot of people against them.

The problem of amazon 1click is not "prior art", the problem is "Where's the damn invention?", "Where's the inventive step, the technical effect"? It's trivial and trivial patents are harmful to an economy. More analysis on the prior art issue ( FFII paper)

In fact, whether there is 'prior art' or not: Amazon 1 click revealed the failure of the patent system when it comes to eCommerce, Internet and Software. Patents may be good in other fields, in the software industry they are not common usage. Patents benefit only lawyers and patent privateers. And Large scale IT companies can deal with them...

Europe canceled plans to introduce an Us style software patent system because the SME software industry kicked the patent industry (patent lawyers, patent institutions) in the ass.

Now it is time for the US to join the bandwagon and get rid of the patent lawyer's regime that does so much harm to innovation.

See FFII

by calling Microsoft's "C# Open Standard" bluff, Mono has thrown a huge monkey-wrench into Microsoft's plans.
I strongly disagree. Microsoft is well aware of the open-source community's skill at developing compilers. There are open-source compilers for more languages than you can shake a stick at. To assume that Microsoft didn't think anyone would develop a compiler for C# is incredulous. Rather, I expect they planned on it.

Fear #1: Microsoft will change the APIs/protocols
Why not? They have a long history of it: DirectX is on version 9!

Fear #2: Microsoft will attack Mono with patents
The Mono FAQ says it isn't patentable, but when you ask Microsoft ... A quote from "Microsoft and Patents":
In 2002/03 Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, declared that Microsoft's new standard DotNet was protected by patents and free implementations would not be allowed.
In 2003/04 Microsoft published patent license terms for CIFS which disallow the use ore reimplementation of this communication architecture by GNU software.
In late 2002, Microsoft began dissuade corproporate customers from introducing GNU/Linux by pointing out that if they use free software nobody would protect them from being sued for patent infringement.

This difference in interpretation means this will be an issue in the future.

Fear #3: Mono will be continually chasing Microsoft's tail
MS doesn't care what Mono does, just as long as it quietly voilates (or even just appears to violate) one of Microsoft's patents. For example, even though the SCO lawsuit is completely bogus, it is costing MS's enemies valuable time and money. A .Net lawsuit could do the same thing -- and I personally believe the SCO lawsuit is a "proof of concept".

Mono will soon be protecting us from a .Net monopoly
To be perfectly honest, I'd really like to think so. However, if you think MS is going to stand idly by while Mono does what Samba, Mozilla, and PHP have already done, you grossly underestimate their cunning. I have a strong feeling that this time, MS is prepared and their weapon of choice will be the patent.

That is, unless we ... commit suicide by stopping work on Mono now.
Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Microsoft has done their homework on this one.

Link: MS patents .Everything

Just to reiterate the stuff in the post above, Alan is certainly not fond of such laws and has lobbied against other related laws in just the last month (or did you miss the Alan and Linus protest against software patents?).

Heck, after reading the link it may be the case that the law refered to has not even been passed yet (it was put up before parliament on the 3rd and does not come into force until the 31st). For all we know it might be being lobbied against (not everything Alan says or does makes headline news y'know. For instance, I don't see The Register reporting how he was nearly skewered by a sharp piece of metal sticking out the back of someone's seat in a car a few weeks ago)...

Oh and I can confirm the SUCS stuff too :)

What next, what will be the next thing to get patented? Should idea's like plugin's not be intellectual property in the public domain.

With the advent of the EU Software Patents Bill any intellectual property in the software sector can be patented will stunt and totally demoralise all any any but the most hardened programmers. Any programs or apps they write will need the legal go ahead before launch. Legal software specialists will have to inspect every bit of code and features implemented to justify their uniqueness and or pay the dividends to the respective company's.

What's to stop a company from patenting the ';' in programming. This will mean just about every program ever written will have to pay divends to whoever recieves the patent.

What absolute madness. With all the legal rambling, patents,bickering and finger pointing that is happening lately it is easy to see how the .com bubble burst, affecting every facet of IT and hempering it's growth. I would urge those individuals who have applied for 'loony' patents on 'intellectual' property to make their patents Public Domain to support the growth of the Open Source movement and the further development of all mankind.

Open source and development of the human race as a whole directed by a single entity would be a very noble and challenging task requiring a governing greater than the human spirit. This would seem alot like a communist society although communism would fail for the very reason that it destroys all freedom of speech and uniqueness that we all cherish.

Where to from here?

What next, what will be the next thing to get patented? Should idea's like plugin's not be intellectual property in the public domain.

With the advent of the EU Software Patents Bill any intellectual property in the software sector can be patented will stunt and totally demoralise all any any but the most hardened programmers. Any programs or apps they write will need the legal go ahead before launch. Legal software specialists will have to inspect every bit of code and features implemented to justify their uniqueness and or pay the dividends to the respective company's.

What's to stop a company from patenting the ';' in programming. This will mean just about every program ever written will have to pay divends to whoever recieves the patent.

What absolute madness. With all the legal rambling, patents,bickering and finger pointing that is happening lately it is easy to see how the .com bubble burst, affecting every facet of IT and hempering it's growth. I would urge those individuals who have applied for 'loony' patents on 'intellectual' property to make their patents Public Domain to support the growth of the Open Source movement and the further development of all mankind.

Open source and development of the human race as a whole directed by a single entity would be a very noble and challenging task requiring a governing greater than the human spirit. This would seem alot like a communist society although communism would fail for the very reason that it destroys all freedom of speech and uniqueness that we all cherish.

Where to from here?

It is now time for the USA to organise a strong movement similar to Eurolinux and FFII. We can provide you with assistence.

The World Summit on the Information Society may be used as a plattform as well.

Get organized and put pressure on politicians and administration.

I hate bad software patents as much as the next guy, and that's why I took it upon myself to get educated on the process and language; and that's why I -read- these patents.

Good job. I think this is one of the bad ones:
The idea is very simple. Prior art or not, it ought to be unpatentable for "lack of inventive step". (In a sensible patent system, that is).

The actual coding is a matter of much perspiration and should be protected. That's what copyright is for. I think the US should follow the lead of the recent decision of the European Parliament and limit patentability.

I found this document about MS Patents.

The problem of the prevention of monopoly and the prevention of competition is raised much more acutely in certain other fields to which the concept of property has been extended only in recent times. I am thinking here of the extension of the concept of property to such rights and privileges as patents for inventions, copyright, trade-marks, and the like. It seems to me beyond doubt that in these fields a slavish application of the concept of property as it has been developed for material things has done a great deal to foster the growth of monopoly and that here drastic reforms may be required if competition is to be made to work. In the field of industrial patents in particular we shall have seriously to examine whether the award of a monopoly privilege is really the most appropriate and effective form of reward for the kind of risk-bearing which investment in scientific research involves.

"But the key thing is that Netscape's error reporting only occurred in the case of a fatal crash, whereas Microsoft's patent covers non-fatal program failures as well."

*Lol* Urrgh!

Probably like EOLAS's time stamp patent, their key invention: The private key is deleted after submission. It's already granted in the USA.

So please support FFII.org, Europe is our last hope to get rid of a world wide trivial software patent regime.

Lawyers are liars. They circumvent patent law as crackers circumvent security devices.

It's time to get rid of software patents. Why isn't there a US section of FFII? In Europe they defeated the patent lawyer lobby groups and reached an amendment to the software patent directive which will reduce patentability to "computer-implemented inventions" only. Hope this will pass the EU minister (judicial!! argh!) council.

We need an international movement against those trivial patents that benefit the lawyer community and patent grabbers (EOLAS ...). World Summit Information Society may be a good platfom to voice our concern.

• Directive proposed by the Commission
• Amendments passed by European Parliament Plenary
• Who voted what on roll call votes (MS Word :( )
• vote results (MS word :( )

FFII position

• Voting list
• Amendments analysis

• Directive proposed by the Commission
• Amendments passed by European Parliament Plenary
• Who voted what on roll call votes (MS Word :( )
• vote results (MS word :( )

FFII position

• Voting list
• Amendments analysis

For those who still haven't got the message that this is a good thing, you can read the actual amendments passed by the parliament here. Basically, ffii have won this round. The big question is what will the European Commission do now that the parliament has reversed the intent of the directive?

I was hoping to be among the first to express humble thanks for the opinions that you have deigned to share with us in this forum, but on examination they do not appear to be worth a great deal.

1. The existence of thousands of trivial software patents is not disputed by either side. The only reason that these have not greatly restricted industry so far is that they are not generally enforced.

2. Stac Electronics was large enough to retain a substantial legal team - this is the barrier to which critics refer. The relative size of Stac and MS which you regard as some kind of determining factor is irrelevant.

3. The actions of the European Confederation of Associations of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, representing 500,000 businesses, appear to have escaped your notice. I believe that if you are able to devote sufficient energy to appraising yourself of the contents of their press release, your scepticism regarding their position will be found baseless.

I am mystified as to what debate you could have been following that led you to conclude that the anti software patent position was "laughed out of Parliament", or indeed what instance of "demagoguery" you feel you have identified in this forum.

Whatever you may be referring to, the conclusion of today's EuroParl debate is now there for all to see - may I suggest that you avail yourself of the opportunity to read it?

I was hoping to be among the first to express humble thanks for the opinions that you have deigned to share with us in this forum, but on examination they do not appear to be worth a great deal.

1. The existence of thousands of trivial software patents is not disputed by either side. The only reason that these have not greatly restricted industry so far is that they are not generally enforced.

2. Stac Electronics was large enough to retain a substantial legal team - this is the barrier to which critics refer. The relative size of Stac and MS which you regard as some kind of determining factor is irrelevant.

3. The actions of the European Confederation of Associations of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, representing 500,000 businesses, appear to have escaped your notice. I believe that if you are able to devote sufficient energy to appraising yourself of the contents of their press release, your scepticism regarding their position will be found baseless.

I am mystified as to what debate you could have been following that led you to conclude that the anti software patent position was "laughed out of Parliament", or indeed what instance of "demagoguery" you feel you have identified in this forum.

Whatever you may be referring to, the conclusion of today's EuroParl debate is now there for all to see - may I suggest that you avail yourself of the opportunity to read it?

There most definitely is pressure from the US: see this letter written by the USPTO in name of "the US" and this page on the USPTO's website.

What vote are you talking about? - Denmark is a real member of the EU (if it's not I'd like you to explain my Danish EU passport). Also, you clearly don't know that the ammendments to the draft Directive effectively newter it

Also, read this transcript to see just how many politicians were on our side. If the draft Directive had not been passed at all, we would probably be faced with the prospect of renegotiating the European Patent Convention, and there would have been no democratic input at all.

We've come out of this pretty well.