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"It seems like that if you are against software patents you must be against patents in order for it to make sense..."

It may seem like that but only if you have little if any knowledge of the patent system - its history, economics and law - and an extremely distorted view of what the opposition to software patents is all about.

http://eupat.ffii.org/vreji/cusku/index.en.html#iu ris http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2005/1 589.html http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id =959931 http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_3/kahin/i ndex.html#k7 http://www.researchineurope.org/policy/patentdirlt r.htm

It is also important to realise that the Patent Offices are not and never can be the arbiters of what constitute the great inventions of the day. The patent system is not some prize-giving system, only granting patents to the truly worthy inventors, and in order to be fair and objective, the P.Os can only - at best - reject the truly meritless or clearly unpatentable applications. It may be possible to raise the "inventive step" a little and improve patent quality a little but only in hindsight and in the subjective opinion of some is the 1-click patent a "stupid" patent. In fact a case can easily be made that it was more desirable from the point of view of the economic rationale of the patent system to grant the 1-click patent than it was to grant the RSA patent. The salient point though is that it was neither necessary nor efficient to grant either patent in order that society, the economy and the progress of the sciences and useful arts would benefit from those inventions.

"Although patents are needed to protect innovation..."

This generalisation and assumption is possibly the worst mistake one can make when thinking about the patent system and its effects on innovation and economic welfare:

The most serious error in interpreting the economic evidence is perhaps that in section 5, where the rapporteur's statement asserts that "academic studies have shown a link between R&D spending, patent applications, and productivity." No documentation for this claim is provided. In fact, what is known via academic research is that although a firm's R&D spending is clearly related to its productivity, profitability, or market value, there is little evidence that patents contribute separately to performance, that is, above and beyond R&D spending.[17] Direct survey evidence for the United States and Europe has found that patents are only considered important for securing returns to innovation in the specialty chemicals industry including pharmaceuticals, medical instruments, and specialized machinery.
-- From a critique attached to a petition signed by 14 prominent economists."

"When there are companies whose only holdings are IP, something needs to change."

There is nothing wrong with IP holding companies or "patent trolls". Patents are property. If you extend the scope of patentable subject matter to include "everything under the sun, made by man", heedless of the warnings of economists (and others), you can damn well live with the consequences. :P

Well, they're of dubious legality.

As Prof. Noveck has pointed out in her Peer to Patent project, there is no prospect, politically, of getting rid of software patents in the US. Patent system administrators and policy makers don't listen to economists any more than Creationists listen to biologists and the situation is made even worse when profound economic policy changes can (and have been) made in the courtroom. In Europe, the chance of restoring sanity to the patent system - and other areas of "intellectual property" - is much higher now than it has been (cf. the Gowers review, the RSA's Adelphi Charter etc.) but it is a hard struggle. When economists can petition economic policy makers and be largely ignored, one can see that the disease is severe indeed: http://www.researchineurope.org/policy/patentdirlt r.htm

Nokia is actively campaigning pro software patents in Europe, and spreading misinformation doing this.

Software patents are bad. They do not protect huge investments in research, they protect trivial ideas. The European Parliament reached a good compromise. The parliament's decision to limit software patentability has the support of more than 300.000 citizens, 2.000.000 SMEs and dozens of economists and scientists.

For consumers, software patents lead to higher prices, less choice. For (Open Source) developers, investors and users alike, software patents would mean legal uncertainty: a patent minefield. With the current flood of trivial patents legalized, software innovation would become a dangerous enterprise in Europe.

More info on software patents at FFII.

The Council of Ministers is pushing for unlimited patentability of software, heavily lobbied by patent lawyers. Here Nokia is very active, campaining pro software patents, and spreading misinformation doing so. Nokia's behavior is irresponsible. Do you want to buy products from a company that is untrustworthy? I would say no.

I call upon everyone around the world not to buy Nokia products.

You may copy this page.

Imagine many copies of this call for action against Nokia on the web. Nokia makes much more money selling phones than it can from software patents. Nokia is vulnerable: it needs to be hip. It is not hip. It needs to choose. Pro phones, against software patents.

For Nerds only: unite!
Nerds are often in an advising role. Advise against Nokia. Be proud. Use legal ways. And win. Don't let the dinosaurs win. Is this the information age, or not? Defend your freedom. After the Boston Tea party, the Brussels Tea party. Stand up. Make this a revenge of the nerds.

Nokia is out.
Spread the word.

dear jaruz, michael,

we didn't make a public announcement, so we didn't put it up on the MERIT website so that it could be confirmed. as questions have been raised regarding the authenticity of the announcement and MERIT's commitment to free software, please note that the following letter will be posted to the FLOSS home page as soon as possible - by monday, at any rate - so that it can be "verified". i have added the last paragraph to respond to /. (incorrect) comments regarding the support of MERIT for free software.

given some comments that MERIT "supports the patent lobby" i would also like to clarify that several of the economists listed in the EPIP conference programme were signatories and/or authors of the Economists' Letter against Software Patents sent to the European Parliament.

Moreover, Luc Soete, Director of MERIT, and I both spoke at the Sep 17th conference in the European Parliament against software patents.

best wishes,
Rishab Ghosh
Project leader FLOSS/FLOSSPOLS
MERIT

----
As director of MERIT at the University of Maastricht, I would like to inform you
that we are no longer organising the conference on the topic of Open Standards
and Libre Software in Government at UNESCO Paris, November 24-26, 2003. Until
now, MERIT was responsible for the logistics and through the FLOSSPOLS project,
EC funding for the conference. This is now wholly withdrawn.

We have taken this decision in consultation with the European Commission, whose
support for this conference was earlier being provided through the proposed
FLOSSPOLS project at MERIT.

We sincerely regret the inconvenience this may cause you. For more information
please contact us by e-mail at nov2003@infonomics.nl

For MERIT Prof. Dr. Luc Soete
Director, MERIT
Universiteit Maastricht
PO Box 616, 6200MD
Maastricht, the Netherlands
Tel: +31 43 388 3875
----
MERIT remains fully committed to its research activities in the area of Free/Libre/Open Source
Software through the EC-funded FLOSS project, and the area of FLOSS and government through
the follow-up project FLOSSPOLS. The 2-year
FLOSSPOLS project, which includes research, studies, surveys and public events related to
government and free/libre/open source software will commence later this year.
More information on the project(s) can be found on the FLOSS home page, flossproject.org

So why give patents? The assumption is that what society gets in return for this monopoly (the working of this patented invention, and the fact that the innovator gets a reward for his work will encourage more innovation) weighs up against this negative effect.

The big problem with software patents is that these positive effects do not weigh up against the negative effects. See this MIT study on the effect of software patents in the US and the open letter from a number of distinguished economists to the European Parliament. It's simply a matter of striking the right balance between the positive and negative effects, and in software the negative effects far ouweugh the good ones.

why, pray tell, should such inventions not be worthy of european patent protection?

This has nothing to do with worthiness. The European patent system wasn't designed to make sure innovators are rewarded for their trouble, but to spur the progress of innovation as much as possible. As scientific studies and economists (Google cache, site seems to be down) show, patents do not help innovation in software at all, they actually hamper it.

for a small company, patents are often the ONLY tools they have to keep from being steamrolled by their larger rivals.

This has to be one of the most prevailing misconceptions that pro-swpat people spread. First of all, keep in mind we are currently in the situation where Europe does not have enforceable software patents and has lots of small software development companies, while the US has software patents and mainly huge monoliths. Also, EU software (or other) companies can get software patents in the US and enforce them there at this time without ay problem. Now:

• Situation A, no software patents in Europe (as it is now): Small Company has a great idea, creates a product, sells it. Big Company sees idea, copies it, sells it. Depending on the quality and marketing of Big Company's product and the ability of Small Company to keep innovating and possibly finding a niche market that can sustain its operatrion, Small Company may or may not go broke. No matter what, Small Company can get a software patent in the US and use that to extract money from Big Company in the US.
• Sitation B, software patents in Europe (as proposed): Small Company has a great idea, patents it, creates a product, sells it. Big Company sees idea, copies it, sells it. Small Company sues Big Company for patent infringement. Big Company looks at Small company's product, and sees it infringes on 10 software patents of theirs. The companies settle in a cross-licensing deal, with Small Company possibly paying also an undisclosed amount for usage of the patents from Big Company.

Note that Situation B is not something I just made up, that's how IBM currently behaves in the US. How does introducing software patents in Europe help small European companies defend themselves against big foreign companies, especially since those foreign companies own the majority of the already granted software patents? (75% of the 30,000 already granted ones are in hands of US and Japanese companies)

The only type of small companies that can get easily rich via software patents, are those that do not develop any products. They just patent an idea and then go to big (and possibly also small) companies asking for money, knowing that they can't infringe on any of the other party's patents. This may be an innovative way of making money, but that's not the kind of innovation that the patent system in Europe is supposed to promote.

framing the debate "against" software patents purely on the grounds that the EPO may, in error, issue invalid patents does not, in my opinion, reflect an impressive level of education on the part of EU lobbyists. it rather reflects an astonishing ignornace about today's ecomomic realitities.

Maybe you've seen only that side of the debate, but there are many other sides. When I speak to MEPs, the silly trivial examples of patents granted by the EPO are handy to have, but that's not what the discussion is about. It's mostly about how introducing software patents would not help the European economy at all, how software patents deter innovation and completely undermine the copyright protection that software has (you may think that copyr

This letter is worth reading ...

Flingles wrote:

Never even heard of this patent issue. I followed all the links and nothing really told me why I shouldn't like this thingamajig they're doing. So....tell me...what are people protesting against?

Economists decry the proposed directive as bad economic policy. I particularly recommend this lengthy critique which fully explains the situation, complete with many links to economic studies and DOJ testimony.