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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.

The following:

Patents can generally only be enforced over implementations sold or distributed in the country where the patent is issued. So, if a company has a US patent that is essential to a W3C Recommendation, then it could only seek royalties for products/services distributed in the US.

I'm all for Ireland ... mmmm Guiness :)

There is a huge amount of information on the net about the increasing corporatization of America. From the WTO protests (and presidential primary demonstrations), to activism around Biotechnology, copyright extensions, trademark and trade secrets litigation, patents on software, and on DNA.

I think that this will be the predominant political issue in the coming decade or two (and I think John McCain's showing in the republican presidential primary was in large part an effect of his stance on campaign finance reform, which is closely tied to all of these issues.)

Many patents have already been granted in europe using this loophole:
examples
some companies just wait for one european law to start enforcing them.
here they say they just need a new way to determine the difference between a software and a software truly tied to a device.
my opinion: they can't.
why do they do that: big firms pressure.

STATUS UPDATE (31-12-1999):
We are finally in contact with Apple's legal department. However, we'll be unable to comment our discussion until they take an official position regarding the patents. This could take some time so don't expect anything soon.

This page will shortly be updated with more detailed information on the patented "inventions" and what can be done meanwhile.

--> STATUS UPDATE (12-mar-2000):
There are sadly no news on the patent front. However, we have started working on a new auto-hinting module, that will ultimately replace the TrueType bytecode interpreter for those builds that cannot accept the patent issue.

Please go to the FreeType Auto-Hinting Resources Page for more information.

This page is an attempt to sum up various information which recently emerged on the FreeType mailing lists after the discovery that Apple owns several US patents on TrueType. Its purpose is to explain what the patents are, how they can affect us and what can be done.

We are the developers of the FreeType engine, a free and portable TrueType rasterising library. FreeType was written from scratch from the TrueType specification published by Apple and Microsoft, and thus qualifies as a "clean room" implementation of this standard. It is distributed with a BSD-like license, which allows any kind of developers to include it in their products, be they commercial or not.

We recently discovered that Apple owns several patents related to TrueType. A simple advanced search on IBM's Intellectual Property Network website (http://www.patents.ibm.com/advquery) shows that Sampo Kaasila, who were the original TrueType architect at Apple, was granted 5 patents for Apple related to digital font technology. Three of them seem to relate directly to the TrueType specification :

• • Patent #1 : US5155805: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices

  • Filed on May, 8 1989

• • Patent #2 : US5159668: Method and apparatus for manipulating outlines in improving digital typeface on raster output devices

  • Filed on May, 8 1989 too. Actually, the two patents were filed and granted concurrently.

• • Patent #3 : US5325479: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices

  • Filed on May 28, 1992 which is the continuation of patent #1. The difference with this patent are extremely subtle, and we fail to see what it covers which isn't in patent #1.

Apparently yes, it affects the bytecode interpreter used to hint TrueType outlines. It also affects any other similar engine that render TrueType fonts per se the specification.

Note that the TrueType specification used to write FreeType doesn't mention any patent, nor any pending patents. We used the "TrueType Font Format Specification" document, version 1.0, published in 1990 and available from Apple under the reference "ADPA M0825LL/A". None of the successive releases of this paper document, be they in paper or electronic forms mentioned them either. (And yes, we're speaking of the documents produced by both Apple and Microsoft).

It's hard to tell, as this depends mostly on Apple's response to the situation. We can imagine having to modify some parts of the code in order to not use the patented "invention". Depending on the patents' peculiarities, this may come at the price of inferior rendered quality, if we're unable to find an alternate algorithm producing the same results.

Another deep question is to know what to do about the currently released versions of FreeType (from 1.0 to 1.3.1). Because of its huge success, FreeType has been succesfully used in a great variety of products like graphics libraries, font servers, printers, web browser plugins, server-side web plugins and more... It is also heavily distributed through the Internet, and the library comes on the latest RedHat and Caldera CDs for example.

We do not reference all the projects that use our library, simply because there are too much and too changing. Many of them are open source and freely distributed, updated and integrated into other products. Clearly, a patent violation would have more than hairy consequences.

Strictly speaking, when a patent is granted, it permits its owner to excludemembers of the public (those members can be real people or simply companies) from making, using or selling the claimed invention.

Note that a common misconception is that the patent gives its owner the right the make, use or sell its invention. It only gives the owner the ability to exclude others, though he may himself/herself be forbidden from using the invention due to the existence of another patent or other legal restrictions. For example, person A is allowed to patent an improvement over an invention patented by person B. In order to use his/her invention, person A will need the permission from person B. If person C wants to use the improved invention, he/she will need permission from both person A and B !

In practice, a patent owner usually sells limited rights to the invention to customers who want to use its invention. The amount of "permission", i.e. the licensing fees determined by the vendor and customer and can vary enormously. However, nothing prevents a patent owner from excluding any use of its invention, wathever the amount of money proposed by the customer.

On the other hand, patents cover implementations, and not ideas. If someone comes with a different "apparatus" that produces the same results than a patented invention, he/she shall not fall under the patent protection and ask for "permission".

Patents were introduce to encourage inventors to publish their work, in exchange of increased intellectual property protection. A US patent runs for 20 years from the date it is filed to the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). A US Patent only applies to making, using and selling the invention in the US .

Finally, here is an extract from the US PTO brochure on patentability :

• In order for an invention to be patentable it must be new as defined in the patent law, which provides that an invention cannot be patented if: ?(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent,? or ?(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country more than one year prior to the application for patent in the United States . . .?

  If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere in the world, or if it has been in public use or on sale in this country before the date that the applicant made his/her invention, a patent cannot be obtained. If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere, or has been in public use or on sale in this country more than one year before the date on which an application for patent is filed in this country, a patent cannot be obtained. In this connection it is immaterial when the invention was made, or whether the printed publication or public use was by the inventor himself/herself or by someone else. If the inventor describes the invention in a printed publication or uses the invention publicly, or places it on sale, he/she must apply for a patent before one year has gone by, otherwise any right to a patent will be lost.

  Even if the subject matter sought to be patented is not exactly shown by the prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly similar thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences would be obvious. The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one material for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable.

Note that the second paragraph makes it hard to understand why patent #3 was granted, given that the TrueType specification was fully published by Apple in 1990, two years before the patent was filed.

In the US, software patents are considered as normal patents. Moreover, it is possible, through careful use of legal language in the patent application, to patent software algorithms. This is well known from the infamous LZW compression algorithm used for the GIF graphics file format. Another case is the RSA algorithm for prime computations used in many security products.

In Europe, software and algorithms _cannot_ be patented, which means that a european developer is free to develop, use, distribute and market in Europe any software he/she wants, even if it uses algorithms patented under US laws. However, the US patent will apply as soon as he/she wants to distribute, sell or use its software in the US. Moreover, any other person who wants to use, distribute or sell its software in the US will fall under the patent "protection". It is clear that a US patent is also much an issue for any european developer.

The same applies to other countries where the US patent doesn't apply, and where the invention wasn't protected under the local patent office administration, when there is one.

Note that some countries have some aggreements with the US that make any US patent localy effective. Details of such countries are welcomed for updates on this page

FreePatents.org

IBM's Intellectual Property Network

US Patent and Trademark Office Brochure on Patents

You can't do a search for prior art - you'll have to search the entire internet (and more). When searching for prior art, the Patent Office only uses their own database! At least that is what is the practice in Denmark.

Patent's are supposed to give other developers access to your inventions, but have you tried to read a patentdescription? Patents are written in a languange which "only" patent lawyers understand, therefore the average developer will not be able to benefit from the patent databases - they simply don't understand it.

Patents mostly don't benefit the small companies because the big companies often will have a many more patents, which you maybe are using without knowing it. Furthermore big companies has much more money and (probably) better lawyers I would also like to argue about whether a patent on "window display system" would have been good for innovation. What if the World Wide Web, the graphic click-able, interface of the Internet as we know it had been patented? im Berners-Lee who invented it, has said: "If the technology had been proprietary it would never have taken off. The decision to make the web an open system was necessary in order for it to become universal".

For further information, take a look at these links:
The EuroLinux File on Software Patents

Even though software patents mostly isn't possible in Europe, many softwarepatents exists anyway - take a look here and I bet you will be shaking your head: European Software Patent Horror Gallery

SSLUG (Skåne Sjælland Linux User Group) has written a good article here: Software patents - No thanks!

Freepatents.org

Greetings Joergen

FreePatents
EuroLinux

____________________

Despite what many patent attorneys claim, according the law (Art 52 EPC), computer programs (which are not part of a hardware machine) are not patentable in the European Community (nor India).

However, in Europe courts and the EPO revision boards have frequently yielded to patent applicants desires, so that legal text and patent grant practice and jurisdiction have been in dischord in many EU countries (less so in France or UK, more so in Germany).

The European Commission (as well as the UKPTO, see learned from mickwd's posting) is currently doing a revision of the EU patent law and till 15 Dec 2000, inviting comments on patentability of software.

With legal spirit and practice being divided, the decision may either widen or narrow to the distance to US/AU/JP/ZH (or IN, on the other hand).

If you do have an opinion the road EU should take, please respond to this invitation. You also might consider supporting petition.eurolinux.org or freepatents.org.

A law firm (Oppedahl & Larson LLP) owns patents.com. There is actually some good stuff there. And of course, there is always Freepatents.org, IBM's Gallery of Obscure Patents, and O'Reilly's list of Controversial Patents.

Patents are a good thing for their intended use, which is physical goods (including computer hardware). They do not make sense for computer software; in this field, copyright is the best way to secure rewards for authors. Patents on computer programs create a legal minefield for small developers and allow companies to get monopolies on business methods, by phrasing their patent as one on software.

The critique at lpf.ai.mit.edu was written several years ago, but the points it makes are just as true today. Also freepatents.org has some useful links.

People who oppose software patents are not (in general) opposed to patents themselves. It's just that patents are inappropriate for computer software.

Algorithms can't be patented in the UK

Well.. unfortunately it's not that simple any more. Although the European Patent Convention specifically excludes software from being treated as a patentable 'invention', the European Patent Office ruled that this didn't mean what it said, and computer programs can be patented after all. It just goes to show that patent offices will try as hard as they can to increase what is patentable, without concern for whether such patentability is desirable. The EPO seems no more trustworthy than the USPTO. Following the EPO's decision, the UK patent office has revised its practice on software patents.

Anyway, it is still not certain whether such patents granted are actually enforceable. The European Commission are considering changing the law to catch up with the EPO's behaviour, so that software patents will become officially permitted (rather than de facto permitted as at present). Until then it isn't certain whether a lawsuit based on a European software patent would succeed (IANAL); big companies such as IBM are however stocking up on software patents in the hope of one day being able to use them. (Have a look at freepatents.org for more about stopping this from happening.)

Unisys claim to have a patent on LZW in several European countries, including the UK. I don't know whether they've actually tried to shake down British companies for money though. But you may not be as safe as you think.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

League for Programming Freedom -- organization that opposes software patents and user interface copyrights.

Free Patents Pretty much what the name says. Patent reform. No software patents. Etc.

Patently Absurd-- Great, but old, article from Wired about the Patent office.

HTH

Yes, the real villains here are not Google (who may just be trying to defend themselves, we'll have to wait and see), but those who grant such patents in the first place.

In the US, this seems to be mainly down to the incompetence of the USPTO, who clearly have a vested interest in expanding the scope of what is patentable. Elsewhere in the world, it is made clear that software is not patentable. Copyright makes sense for software, patents do not.

But there are some who are lobbying to spread the US software patent system throughout the world. In particular, they seek to introduce software patents in the European Union. You can check out freepatents.org to find out more about the fight to stop this happening.

• Union for the Public Domain: their page on Business Practice Patents.
• The League for Programming Freedom: their page on Software Patents
• freepatents.org for activism in the EU
• Phil Karn: his "The US Patent System is Out of Control"

Maybe the cause is already lost in the new country, but for Europe there is still hope. :)

There are no software patents as such in EU (see freepatents.org). However, the European Commission is apparently pushing for more software patents. You may want to tell your opinion to your MEP or to the people in charge, now while there is still time.

Maybe the cause is already lost in the new country, but for Europe there is still hope. :)

There are no software patents as such in EU (see freepatents.org). However, the European Commission is apparently pushing for more software patents. You may want to tell your opinion to your MEP or to the people in charge, now while there is still time.

There is a site and mailing list trying to prevent the introduction of patents on software and business models in the European Union: freepatents.org.

If you live in Europe, you should check out freepatents.org. The LPF site may be mostly news, but in Europe there is stuff happening. Software patents have not been introduced in the EU, but there is a danger that they will be. But it's not too late.

Alternatively, you can buy Alan Cox's USPTO T-shirt at ThinkGeek.

This, along with a story about a patent on Y2K 'windowing' I heard last night on NPR (which was also reported earlier here on Slashdot) has got me completely disgusted.

It's about time we get together as an angry mob with pitchforks and torches, and knock over and burn that damn patent office. Why hasn't there been any congressional lobbying or attention on this yet? (Because companies like being able to fence off almost brainlessly obvious solutions and hold other companies hostage? Hello Amazon? Hello Yahoo? Hello-- oh hell, just search for 'patent' on Slashdot!)

I'd rather see no patents whatsoever on anything than this garbage!

latest news:
http://www.freepatents.org/

latest news:
http://www.freepatents.org/

This just illustrates how inappropriate patents are for software. Even if this were an original idea (and as others have pointed out, it certainly isn't), it wouldn't be worth granting a patent on it, because it would restrict competition far too much and subject developers to legal harassment. It's also merely a combination of existing ideas - filling in templates, and caching data in memory - that would be obvious to any skilled programmer.

Of course Yahoo are free to copyright the code they are using, and that makes sure that they can get a good return from their effort. But allowing companies to patent particular ideas and then sue other developers is bad news both for the software industry and for consumers.

It's not too late to stop software patents being introduced in Europe - check out freepatents.org if you live in the EU.

Software patents are not yet granted in Europe. However, the EU is considering whether to follow the US system and grant patents on computer programs, which would be damaging to consumers and businesses, as well as software developers. You can help persuade them that this is not such a good idea; check out freepatents.org.

If offshore == europe, where a big part of OSS already comes from, the problem becomes much more interesting. Europe does have a patent system, which is probably extremely complex because of the two levels (local & european), but as far as I know, (http://www.freepatents.org/) it's not (yet!) so buggy.

Surely the only problem is one of patents, not copyrights. But we already have 'free' software which is restricted in the US and Japan by patents, and some licenses (eg IBM's licence for Jikes) restrict your use of certain patents, while the software itself is still considered free. (It is at least free in Europe, but maybe not for much longer; see freepatents.org.)

As Richard Stallman says, patent reform is not enough.

Also take a look at the League for Programming Freedom and freepatents.org.

www.freepatents.org reports that European law itself is not fully enforced and that the "exceptions" clause may be interpreted by member countries as basically including or excluding most of the computer programs.

But the problem is, in one month, the member states of the Munchen convention are planning to legalize software patents in Europe. (see freepatents.org).

So soon, the EU will have its share of junk software patents too (as USA and Japan do). We'll join the party :-(