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EU Board Votes To Allow Software Patents
scamp was one of the folks who wrote from Europe with the news that
an administrative board for the European Patents Office has voted 10-9 to allow patents for software in Europe. There's still a final conference to be held in Novemeber to ratify the decision - so there's still time to sign the petition against it. The conference in November should be close - the multinationals, US and Japan are applying heavy pressure. BTW, if you can't read German, use the fish.
Secondly, I don't think these guys are online often enough, because they forgot to divide the duration time for software patents by 10.
Thirdly, in a world where monopolies are supposed to be BAD, monopolies over information is still allowed.
Now, no protection is also BAD. But the current patent system is destructive. We are no longer all farmers!
What should we do? Any suggestions?
Amazon's patent is *stupid* as in it is obvious.
At least the title "one-click shopping" is. In reality, I assume the content of the patent is more specific and it doesn't apply to all shopping carts.
It is also a combination of technologies... cookies, databases, etc. Sure they have a formula, but that is what they have. Not a monopoly on everything that is "one-click". And the technologies they use are not theirs.
Programming is very systematic. And answers are better off shared, because they always lead to the next thing. And you usually are already using shared code. Once you have specific pieces of code patented, every programmer suffers because they ahve to work around them. And yes, it is almost always possible to work around them. Just a pain in the asss.
What if certain tags in HTML were patented? What if cookies had royalties?
It usually isn't the programmer who goes to the patent office... it's the guy who hired him/her.
I certainly hope so, but you have to try and pull the right strings to make this something more than just a geek thing that doesn't wake people up. To influence the decision makers (read: politicians) it is not enough to publish something in the web. These people think that a topic is important if they can read it in the major newspapers. And it's not the poor little IT professionals they care about. It's economy and national competence, the future success of a country and its businesses (or that's what they should be interested in, to benefit voters).
I approached a major Finnish newspaper (Finns consider it an institution, if you would say) with the suggestion that they should write an article in a way that laymen understand for the following reasons:
-These patents threaten the success of small Finnish IT companies, who have to hire an army of lawyers, or perish. Besides, Finnish is not going to be one of the languages that can be used in the patent filing.
-Many methods have already been patented in USA and Japan and it is logical that the protection for these would easily be expanded to cover Europe. European companies are worse off.
-The public sector is currently actively trying to find ways to develop and make public services available over the internet, or utilizing telecommunications and computers (education, care of the elderly, etc.). Patents can prevent the use of these methods even for non-profit government activities.
The issue is not a new one. However, there are great economic values at stake yet so few people are aware of these and can portray the consequences of bad decisions! It should be interesting for small investors (not professionals, but common folks) that the share price of those highly popular IT companies (reflecting expectations) could be seriously affected by this. Therefore this is certainly worth an article.
Let's keep the thumbs up that these concerns get mainstream media coverage!
... Should instead increase exponentualy. So you get Price^number of patents already granted by the applicant. That way huge ass corporations can't keep a large cache of stupid patents and individual persons can still patent geniune inventions for a nonimal fee.
Grammar, grammer, spelling, to bad this is slashdot and not english, eh?
a) It ensures that the money invested in a commercial development (invention) can be earned back from the work before others just copy and paste. That by itself is fair and forms an incentive for inventing things.
It is important to keep in mind that this only applies for commercial activities. As long as you're not commercial, you don't have to care. Unfortunately, courts seem to regard everything as commercial. That's a problem.
The other problem is, that funny things are considered to be inventions. An invention by definition is something substantially new. Unfortunately, patent offices seem to consider things to be substantially new, that are more of a joke (click a single button instead of two to order the book). You wouldn't be able to do a PhD with that so why should that make a patent?
b) The second purpose of patents is to make them public. This is the point always missed. If you want to patent something, you will have to publicize it. That's the deal. The idea was, that others can learn from that and maybe develop something based on that.
This is actually what the whole open source community is demanding all the time: opening the source. So patenting e.g. Windows should mean, opening the source. You can't compile your own windows then (because the patent protects it), but you can see how MS has done it and finally write the nice software that really integrates. You even would be able to see, what backdoors are in there and how good security really is.
In order to not block markets and developments forever, patents expire. The time is quite long because when the laws where set up, most inventions were of mechanical nature, complicated machines and you needed many years to get your investment back. Not so with software! Since software is trivial to duplicate, the money for the investment comes back in much shorter time.
The logical consequence of all this is to allow patents for software, but adjust their expiry date. So make it running for a year and then the stuff becomes public domain. If a company doesn't like that, it can't patent. By adjusting the protected period to nowaday's needs, everyone is treated fairly. And then there is nothing evil in a patent.
Just my humble opinion,
patrick!
*That* is what software patents are about. Patenting things that a lot of people are bound to implement and 'invent' independent of the patent holder, not even knowing someone has done it before
No. When you want to get a patent for anything, you have to provide evidence to the comittee that your idea/thing is compliant to the rules the comittee has setup. For example, an obvious idea that can come up in every skilled person's head during his work will never be granted a patent. When you want a 20 year patent, you have to prove with examples and materials that your idea is indeed unique and worth the 20 year patent. This is NOT easy (as in: easy to convice the patentcomittee). So don't worry someone patents a forloop that searches a single linked list :). It's more about patents on CLEVER IMPLEMENTATIONS of algoritms that for example do real time LOD on meshes for example, stuff that is now patented using not the sourcecode but ideadescriptions.
Software patents are about clever implementations of an algoritm, not the algoritm itself. That is already patentable. Because, as I said, the rules are strict, it's hard to proof that your 'clever' implementation is unique. A good example of a clever implementation is Dijkstra's semaphoreless concurrency program.
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Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
That said, I think software patents are still a good thing, although not in their current incarnation. I think patent offices should recognize the differences between hardware and software, and allow patents of software and mathematical algorithms for much shorter periods of time.
I also agree that dumb patents don't deserve to live. However, instead of making us challenge all of them individually, shortening the time period to maybe three or five years would make the problem disappear quickly enough that in many cases it would not be worth the bother, either to fight the patent, or even obtain it in the first place.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
Bollocks. I've written an enormous amount of code, and most of it remains locked up, unused and unavailable. I wrote a database system that could re-format tables on the fly about five years before anyone else could (AFAIIA, I am drunk at the moment though). Bloody company went under due to excessive Porsche consumption, and my code dissappeared with it. Now no-one gets the benefit, but some muppet gets to claim they did it first, and that somehow makes them special, and entitled to monopoly profits? Fuck that shit. Most coding 'innovations' are obvious given enough thought, not that a fucking patent clerk could ever recognise that. Like any half decent coder aims to become a patent clerk.
I DEMAND TO BE JUDGED BY MY PEERS! Fuck the rest of you...
...now where's that vodka gone?
take Thoreau's advice to "Do what thou wilst will be the whole of the law"
You're quoting Crowley here, not Thoreau...
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Amen! Slashdot seems to have forgotten that some IP is good, and that this entire software industry that (dare I say it? I will...) OSS has leached from, was based on IP.
/. jihad. Here it comes...
What worries me is that them kids around here are neglecting that the software industry was built around very proprietary and very profitable platforms. OSS is a great engineering practice (and I support it wholeheartedly) but its not a panacea and it's not orthogonal to making a profit off your code or IPing it.
Most importantatly them kids forget that OSS (or FS or whatever) is *dependent* on copyright law to impose their licenses, not least of which restrictive ones like the GPL.
I wish we could both voice this opinion without facing the
Sarkazmo is the assumed identity of a long-time
They slashdotted the fish! Those bastards!
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The shareholder is always right.
The nerve! allowing people to patent intellectual work! What is wrong with them, fancy-food-eating, foreign-language-speaking Europeans? Copyright!? on software!? unbelievable!
Next thing we'll know, some long-haired freak will come up with some viral license that will restrict people's rights to their code so as to keep it open! thank God we're gonna file that petition so that hare-brained schemes like that are gonna fail and everybody will be able to do whatever they want!
...
Don't people think around here before launching into tirades against patents and laws? don't they realize not all regulation is bad? has Atlas Shrugged too much or are you just making too much money for your age?
Sarkazmo is the assumed identity of a long-time
Don't waste your time. Instead, take advantage of the situation, go file a patent application.
Yeah, right, yankee boy. Something like your own 0.5-click-shopping, no?
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
For those who understand german:/ bp_artikel/STRUCID/PAGE_200013/PAGEID/PA GE_200051/docid/327155/SH/0/depot/0/index.html
http://www.handels blatt.com/hbiwwwangebot/fn/relhbi/sfn/buildhbi/cn
Something I really don't get in the actual logic of software patents.
I though ideas where non patentable !
Take for instance the 1-Click patent, if someone comes with a different implementation of the 1-Clik scheme, he is still considered as violating the patent ? so in fact he is violating the idea of 1-Click for shopping not it's application!?
Where is the logic? And why this can't be brought to a court?
...Despite the fact that a good number of the companies pushing for this probably have American branches and/or parent companies...
-RickHunter
no sig
"Did Einstein patent 'The Theory of Relativity', or 'Special Relativity'"
Umm, Einstein didn't patent The Theory of Relativity because pure IDEAS ARE NOT PATENTABLE.
The implementation of an idea IS patentable. So you can't patent the Theory of Reletivity, but you could patent a time machine based on it. (or something.)
When it comes to software, the line between the implementation and the idea is very fuzzy. I can't help you more than that.
I can spell. I just can't type.
>>Is the light bulb really THAT different from a fire? Duh! Yes, it is. And equally different is a paint program from a canvas and paint. Some guy came up with the light bulb and he deserves a patent. Let's not let things get out of hand. The one-click patent is stupid. The light bulb is not. One is a ripoff, the other is a tremendous historic milestone. I want some guy who has written some great software to get a patent. What is important is how the patent office decides what gets a patent and what doesnt. They have do be educated. New great software should be 'patentable'.
Shape here, shape there, shapes everywhere
Yeah, right, yankee boy. Something like your own 0.5-click-shopping, no?
Perhaps not as silly as it sounds... just link the 'buying' action to an 'onmousedown' rather than an 'onclick' and voila, 0.5-click-shopping.
Woo woo woo, let's make some money!!
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Azrael - The Angel of Death
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Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
If they're going to print it out along with the signatures, there's no point to having links to other sites, no matter how well placed in the text they may be.
If they're going to submit the petition as a URL, with a note reading, "Hey, here's the petition, fire up your web browsers," then I hope the European politicians aren't as dismissive of web-based text as the American ones are.
(Yes, I'm an American, and yes, I signed it.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Usually, one could say yes, although all law-giving decisions have to happen unanimously.
(In some rare cases with the approval of the European Parliament.)
But as stated before it's only a bunch of directors of the European Patent Office. Which happens to earn money on every issued patent.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Hahahhahahah! At least it's not PYTHON
no sig
you cant ... copyright something that should instead be trademarked
Then what should we do with cartoon characters? Copyright them and get perpetual copyright? Or trademark them and get perpetually renewable trademark? Most companies <cough>Disney</cough>do both.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
The danger here lies within the problem that small company who had it implemented before didn't patent it as its a common thing. and just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
So the scenario here is that small company implements it, you don't see it. Big company implements it and patents it, you see it. And now you protect the big company's patent which infringes small company who had it implemented before. and small company are to remove the function, or pay royalties to big company.
So Is this what you really want? - Think NOT!
Ich bin interessiert, an, Geschlecht mit einem weiblichen Schwein zu haben
no sig
Ahhh, but .PNG isn't animated. .MNG is.
Definitely sign the petition. I did, even if I'm only from 'North America'. :)
Apparently in the US, computer programs strictly by themselves aren't patentable, but once they start doing something, (method for dimming lights in a greenhouse...) they are. I was reading through some random patent law the other day, the US patent office has strict, brain-dead guidelines as to what is and is not enforced.
My question is, if most source is closed anyhow, how do we demonstrate 'prior art'? And, for that matter, how can you tell the code is really that old? Find an old backup tape as proof? Hope no one asks you if you faked it all yesterday? This could be somewhat hard to do with computer software...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I think I agree with this (allow software patents but reduce the expiry date), however, I know from experience that it can take more than a year between filing an application and the patent actually being granted. In the UK, at least, the information in the patent does not become publically available until the patent is granted.
It seems to me that if software patents were to expire after one year, the application process would have to speed up correspondingly.
Molly.
Well, you probably didn't invent C++ or Java either.
So I guess he can only patent certain "ways" of driving. Like driving by stepping on the pedal "once".
OK, look, I'll probably get moderated as a troll for saying this, but here goes:
I've written code. Not a whole lot, but enough to know that a lot of work goes into things. I'm all for free software, but I also think that if the programmer of something wants to make money from his work, then he should be perfectly entitled to. If I ever wrote something original and cool, I'd want to be reimbursed in some way for the time that I put into it. I don't know that I'd patent it, especially under the current system, but it'd be really nice to see that my work is recognised, at some official level, as my own.
Just my two cents. Moderate away, but please, don't do the usual "Slashdot says it's bad, so I'll moderate down all posts saying otherwise."
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Regardless of whether you think that it is right or wrong that an author should possess the right to forbid copying of his work, unauthorized copying is not the same as stealing.
It's a broken analogy used by those who wish to exagerrate the seriousness of the offence of unauthorized copying.
In short, copyright does nothing to hinder theft. It hinders copying.
> There's still a final conference to be
> held in Novemeber to ratify the decision
YM "rectify"
Living is a horizontal fall
Isn't that because patents cost $$$$? Even if all the little guys band together they'll have a hard time coming up with the cash to patent at the rate the larger companies do. It's really very unfair. I'm working on developing some algorithms, relevant to engineering computations, that I hope might be profitably patentable (with the intent of taking money from large companies and letting everyone else use them for free) but I don't even have the cash to consider filing a patent (and, to be honest, my work, while I think it's promising, isn't ready for prime-time yet.)
It seems to me that, while we won't ever make the system so cash-neutral that unpatented prior art establishes an implicit patent (in contrast to copyrights), small-time software houses and programmers should collaborate on establishing a database on prior art. Unfortunately, I'm not sure who would pay the legal fees for defending it. Right now patents seem to be an exclusive right to any idea you want, so long as you have big money to defend your dubious claims in court.
>I still despise the EU because it is essentially a conglomeration of socialist irreligious states\
...and every citizen of the EU despises you back.
'Innovative corporations' my arse.
You can make GIFs with no LZW compression, but the file size is quite a bit bigger.
Try five times bigger.
Also, I thought not even Mozilla supported MNG yet
Depends on which build you run.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Against Software Patents, by the League for Programming Freedom (founded mostly by RMS):p /lpf-against-software-patents.html.
http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/articles/int-pro
The article is a little bit out of date, but it does a good job of explaining the problems of software patents and has many specific examples. It's still a good introduction to the subject.
These unelected people have no law-making power. They were just given their opinion.
It's exactly this kind of crap which makes so many of us in England against tighter integration with the EU.
It's exactly that kind of ignorance from England that make English people so out-of-touch with reality.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Wrote to MEP Neil MacCormack (Scottish National Party, Scotland) saying what a bad idea software patents are and he replied...
Which I didn't expect at all. Can anyone suggest what I should say in reply?
Jonathan Riddell
Did Einstein patent "The Theory of Relativity", or "Special Relativity", or did Maxwell, or P.A.M. Dirac patent anything? NO! As stated by Einstein, "If they saw futher than others it because they stood on the sholders of giants,"
One other important point is that Einstein once worked as a patent examiner. His level of cynicism appears badly missing from current patent offices world wide. At some time in the rescent past some moron came up with the idea that passing patents should be financially advantageous...
It's nice to keep on signing petitions and drumming up publicity, but sometimes I really begin to doubt if the governments of the world will ever get a clue that the current patent system doesn't work at all. The anti-EU-software patent petition received plenty of media attention (I think I even heard about it on CNN!), and it still hasn't proved successful.
Thus someone needs to find out something as vital and easily disruptable as motor fuel deliveries which will affect the patent office.
Well, I think it should be liberally applied to fish and deep fried, and I will be advising my Euro MP to vote for this.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
IOne thing I will take issue with: your bringing up the millions of dollars companies spend. An idea is not and should not be patentable simply because you've spent millions on it.
If some large organisation spent more that the GDP of a small country to come up with something "obvious" then more fool them.
In fact, patents are MORE defensible for the little guy, the backyard inventor, the small startup with a good idea.
Wasn't the original purpose of patents to protect the "little guy" from having their inventions ripped off by large companies anyway?
AFAIK, according to the US patent system:
Alfred patented a Bug then is Charly not allowed to use Bugs in any way without the explicit permit by Alfred.
Contrary to the German patent system where patents don't apply to the research.
(But it's surely common that the research is granted as it's completely in the interest of Alfred that Charly discovers something interesting which relies on Bugs)
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
You are an idiot. Pure and simple. The patents are all about a rare, time-limited PRIVILEDGE of monopoly that is granted to an indiviudal or corporation in exchange for an invention so profound and beneficial, that the society stands to gain great advantage from the invention's future use. Advantage so great that it outweighs all the evil of a patent.
Rather this is what patents SHOULD be in practice all sorts of trivial, simple, obvious and derived things are getting patents.
If they really did work this way then in excess of 90% of applications would be rejected.
It ensures that the money invested in a commercial development (invention) can be earned back from the work before others just copy and paste. That by itself is fair and forms an incentive for inventing things.
However the original point of patents is the protection of innovation and invention. A creative process which is not really related to money. Hence it being possible to patent an invention without having to manufacture it...
The second purpose of patents is to make them public. This is the point always missed. If you want to patent something, you will have to publicize it. That's the deal. The idea was, that others can learn from that and maybe develop something based on that.
The other part of making it public is that it should mean that anything obvious (or plagurised) in a patent should result in an invalidation PDQ.
Please elaborate how 'developing a process and getting a pattent for it' is related to 'the effort that you put into driving a car'. Last time I checked, you had to purchase a car from a dealership (or another owner). When you did that you got the right/privillage to put that effort into driving the car. Your driving ability, like playing basketball, is not pattentable. there is no relationship. You also spent thousands of hours learning to walk. Should be pay you royalties too?
Do you not agree with intelectual property rights? Do you have a better solution? If so please enlighten all of us. I'd like to think I have an open mind.
I am French, and I want to know if my goverment was for or against.
Apparently France, Germany and the UK voted against. Maybe the rest of Europe has little software industry of their own, so they don't see the problems.
Problem Solved!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I can't believe that so many governments could be bought out by corporations. Like it or not, computer code is a written work, not a device. The only "device" involved in the execution of software is the computer itself, which reads the instructions embodied by computer software and takes actions accordingly.
:= 1;
/* MaryLamb.c */
Written works are certainly protectable by copyright, and this is a Good Thing. A person's work should be protected. But copyrights, patents, and trademarks are meant to be mutually exclusive (you can't patent something that you could instead copyright, nor copyright something that should instead be trademarked, etc), and for a good reason. To claim patents on written works is to claim ownership of thought itself (not a specific thought, mind you, but ideas themselves); this can never be allowed.
How to prove software is a written work? How does this strike you:
"Mary had a little lamb."
This is obviously a written work. Well out of copyright in this specific instance, but that's irrelevant; all we're looking for is written work (and preferably a short one, as we're going to be doing a lot with it). Were I to use the whole rhyme, and were it an original work, it could be copyrighted.
María tenía un cordero pequeño.
The same sentence, translated into Spanish (my Spanish is, sadly, somewhat rusty, so forgive me if I got something wrong). Still obviously a written work; it's well established that a translation of a written work is still a written work.
program MaryLamb(output);
type
lamb: integer;
var
Mary: array[1..10] of lamb;
begin
Mary[1]
end.
The same thing, translated into Pascal (as with Spanish, my Pascal is very rusty, so I'd appreciate any corrections). 1 is certainly a "little" value relative to the set or integers, or "lambs" as I'm calling them here, so we still communicate that Mary had a little lamb. It's been established that source code is a written work. Translation, therefore, still has not violated that, and source code as itself should, as a written, copyrightable work, not be patentable. But let's take this a little further...
#define LAMB int
int main() {
LAMB *Mary;
Mary = new LAMB;
*Mary = 1;
return 0;
}
A very rough translation of the MaryLamb program to C (and once again, my C is rusty). Translation from language to language doesn't make this a non-written work, does it?
"Zmel umq m yvggyr ymzo."
The English sentence again, but now it's ROT13'd. A simple one-to-one mapping of characters onto other characters; in other words, a cipher. However, it has been established that putting a written work into a cipher like this still does not affect its status as a written work.
"Blue green red yellow orange."
Same sentence, but I've mapped whole words now instead of characters. I've encoded it. But again, I haven't affected its status as a written work. I could get really crazy and map it to, say, Japanese katakana, but I'm not good with katakana and I would be willing to bet that the browsers of most Slashdotters wouldn't be able to display it anyway. But this is another type of encoding, where I've mapped parts of words (the syllables) rather than the whole words. And I still haven't affected the status.
Now, let's go back to the C-language version. Suppose I were to translate that into assembly (substitute your favorite architecture's ASM here; I'm not about to start flamewars by picking one in particular). Still human-readable, still the same message. And still not in dispute over whether or not it's a written work.
But now, let's run that through an assembler. What does this do?
In simple terms, it maps the individual instructions in ASM to their machine-language equivalents. Nothing but a re-encoding (I'll deal with linkers momentarily). This is still human-readable, though relatively few people except chip designers ever take the required study to do it (reading machine code is hard though by no means impossible). In other words, simple translation and encoding. We still have a written work, unless you're going to apply a double-standard.
Now, a program is more than the object code alone; other things are added to it to put it into an executable format (this is why linkers are necessary). But this is all still human-readable, if you take the time to learn it. In other words, by the definitions set earlier in this post, a program, in source or object form, is still provably a written work, and written works have been legally defined as unpatentable.
There are other ways to prove that software cannot be legally patented, such as proving the fact that all software is, at heart, a mathematical equation (these are already defined as unpatentable). I've just taken a more unusual route, and one which negates the argument that programmers' works need to be protected by still allowing for that protection, but only for the actual work (by means of copyright).
Comments? Corrections for any of the translations above?
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Since you are a slashdot poster, you infringe on Metallica's IP. Please stop it.
It's also so very unfair that Metallica, having investing so much effort in creating their music, aren't allowed to patent it so that no other band can play the same kind of music as them. Music should be patentable too. And books - it's horrible seeing all these authors writing books in a genre someone else have created without being recompensated for their hard toil.
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Niklas Nordebo | nino at sonox.com | +46-708-405095
A big pile of incomprehensible crap in the main, but there you have the famous lines, attributed correctly.
I think that 5 years is ok. Plus a voidance clause. The patent becomes invalid if the method is in common use after one year from original filing date, combined with an invalidation if the patent holder does not inform standards groups of their patent (to get rid of shits like Rambus and Fraunhofer who dump their patent ridden excretions into standards and then tell the world). Plus bounty afforded on invalidating patents. Earn $50000 proving prior art on Amazons 1-click patent, for example, payable by amazon.
Amen.
Now where are those mod points...
All opinions are my own - until criticized
A few years ago I read that most of Evans & Sutherland research fruits are not patented because that would simply let the secrets lose and help others (SGI) to copy.
This patenting thing is mostly bullshit: companies patent things to gain value and to have ground to pick up legal fights at any time they wish. Patents are just food for lawyers..
If tomorrow a caveman comes out with his wheel patent we are all screwed and we are going to have to "re-invent the wheel".
The reason why most people here don't like patents it's cause we are coders not bullshit businessmen.
Thank you.
IIRC, LZW isn't used in ALL GIF images. You can make GIFs with no LZW compression, but the file size is quite a bit bigger.
Also, I thought not even Mozilla supported MNG yet...?
> You'd think with all the bucks in /. the guys could afford to implement a
/. team to check the links. :)
> link-checker in their production system.
No, they will buy all the rights to the Hitchhiker's Guide and change the story. It is easyer then trying to persuade the
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1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Actually, not much of OSS is based on protected intellectual property, except as to work around the concept, either putting it into public domain or enforcing distributability. The foundation of both OSS and the internet lies largely in not-for-profit non-proprietary software.
You seem to miss the point that people write software without IP protection. They even write software to get around IP. Virtually every useful but patented software has gotten its own unencumbered workalike. RSA has multiple replacements. GIF has multiple replacements. mp3 replacements are in progress. And they are obviously *not* clones or copies, but new 'inventions', considering they are workarounds for patents.
Hmmm... Time to dust off my old commodore disk drive.. set up a 64 emulation and code DVD DeCSS, Napster, one click shopping and a few other things. Save it all on old 5 1/4 inch disks.. print out 1980s style disk lables.. Then save the day with a bunch of prior art...
Ok I'm being silly... the one click shopping BTW would be a BBS instead of a website and it would be a SID napster instead of MP3s..
Then what.. Then they look in the copyright database and find none of it existed...
Wops...
If you can get old enough then it's during a time when copyrights had to be regestured to be recognised.
With public domain you can find a user group with a software libary that can conferm the software is from the 1970s or 80s... or a company like WC Cdrom that can certify the software was on an old CDrom sold during the early 1990s.
For newer stuff you need FreshMeat who tracks when the software was first announced on FM what version and what features came later on...
One of the first software patent horror storys I heard was a patent on a software tecnque allready in commen use. I suspect the patent itself was long sence eliminated due to heavy amounts of prior art..
Proving it isn't much of an issue.. it's pritty easy to provide at least a whitness if not documentation of age...
The problem is the patent office dosn't seem to care about doing any real prior art search...
I don't actually exist.
1. Walking backwards. Now you can travel and see where you've been! Protect yourself from surprise rear attacks! Check you haven't left anything behind!
2. Walking sideways. Keep an eye out for cross-winds. Ideal on pavements (US=sidewalks) to avoid cars straying off the road way, and for looking in shop windows.
3. Walking on hands. Don't dirty your shoes.
4. Walk on one hand and one foot. Cut your shoe bill in half!
I am going to patent all these methods of locomotion. True enough, they only took me 30 seconds to think up, so the 0.05 cents I'm planning on charging per pace may be a little disproportionate. Still, nobody said life was fair.
If you're a jock, inflict some pain / If you're a nerd then use your brain - DAPHNE AND CELESTE
Once they see the kind of legal protections that American companies are getting, they will demand the same in the name of "fairness," "competition," etc. The largely nebulous enlightenment of Europe and Europeans may soon fall victim to raw corporate power.
Who are they? American companies employ lobbyists in Europe too you know...
Don't fight it son. Confess quickly! If you hold out too long you could jeopardise your credit rating.
Apparently France, Germany and the UK voted against. Maybe the rest of Europe has little software industry of their own, so they don't see the problems.
Without wanting to appear too egotistical (I'm British) I think that France, Germany and the UK are the strongest EU nations.. so isn't it realy a matter of whatever those three want is ultimately what they'll get? Especially when these three are all in agreement with each other.
--
Azrael - The Angel of Death
Firstly the proposed scrapping of football transfer fees, which would put my club, and others, out of business within a few years. Now we have this.
It looks like the revelution is starting, judging by the few days of chaos resulting from blocking the fuel depots. Maybe an anti-EU one is just around the corner?
Really, kid?
Sarkazmo is the assumed identity of a long-time
The kids on /. seem perfectly willing to infringe Metallica's IP and turn around and defend RMS's right to protect his IP. *I* don't have the concepts confused, Anonymous Kid: your kind that selectively picks and chooses concepts and legislation to fit their self-serving interests does.
Sarkazmo is the assumed identity of a long-time
Herbie J.
It is, indeed, fundamentally illogical to suggest that one should be able to patent hardware but not software that does the same thing.
The problem in the US is not so much software patents *per se*, but how badly the US Patent Office has gone about issuing and regulating them.
I have no problem with people being able to patent something truly innovative, whether the product of lots of hard work or a sudden flash of inspiration.
One should not be able just add '... on the Internet' to existing ideas and patent them, for example.
One thing I will take issue with: your bringing up the millions of dollars companies spend. An idea is not and should not be patentable simply because you've spent millions on it. In fact, patents are MORE defensible for the little guy, the backyard inventor, the small startup with a good idea.
If you spent a million dollars and came up with a poor, lame-ass idea that's not all that original, you don't deserve a patent for it.
The philosopher Robert Nozick made a fascinating argument on patents in his book "Anarchy, State and Utopia"
The gist is that a patent is perfectly just as long as the idea is sufficiently non-obvious that nobody else would think of it for the duration of the patent.
1 click shopping wouldn't take 20 years to come up with, but vulcanized rubber is another matter entirely.
I think that 5 year patents for software are perfectly reasonable, it's the 20 year deal that makes it absurd. The industry just moves too fast.
What do you guys think?
--Shoeboy
Lots of innovations are obvious IN RETROSPECT. However, sometimes nobody has done something before just because nobody thought it was a good idea, not because they didn't think of it. It depends on the circumstances.
Imagine your using the KMP-algorithm in your programm as it's the fastest known (not true, of course) and free algorithm to search a substring in a string.
Now in progress of your programming, you have the idea to modificate the algorithm, (e.g. like Boyer-Moore).
Now you have to search wether this modificated-algorithm is patented or not. Which costs money or at least time.
If it's not patented, you'll have to patent it in order to protect your idea. This does surely costs money (a four decimal number AFAIK).
For a company like, say Big Blue or Microsoft, which have a legal departement as large as most small companies it's no problem.
But for a small software company or even a single programmer this are major obstacles.
Of course, if someone has a revolutionary idea, like solving the Travelling-salesman-problem in O(n^2), one surely deserves the money.
But wouldn't you think, that the same programmer would get a fairly decent job for his further work.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
I'm not very well informed on this issue. All I know is that patenting a sorting algorithm is counter to the traditional scientific value of sharing information for the greater good of humanity / the industry / sorting algorithms.
Also, an inability to patent software does not seem to hold back innovation. We write good software in Europe without patents.
But there must be an argument for this patenting stuff. I'd be interested to know what it is.
I would like to point out that without proper IP protection, the reward of developing and marketing a new software idea could not add up to the risk of doing so. The development of a new idea is risky. It takes time and money to do that, and often the idea may not work. Even if it worked, the market may not accept it. Many inventors lose money in their inventions, and hope that they can one day have successful inventions to cover the losses. A patent provides a mean to maximize the profit of a successful invention. Certainly, the patent of an unsuccessful invention is worthless. A good violinist plays violin skillfully. But that doesn't mean he can write good music. Comming up with a new idea and implementing it is different from perfecting an old idea and requires different skills. The person who has the gut of being the first should be encouraged and protected.
What I'd like to know is why the patent office can make this decision in the first place. The law is made by governments (or EU directives implemented by national governments) and then it is the patent office's job to implement those decisions. Not vice-versa.
BTW: citizens of EU countries, sign the petition if you haven't already.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Couldn't get hold on myself because of my laughter.
Hey moderators! Abuse is what I consider everything BUT FUNNY!
I think Hemos meant http://babelfish.altavista.com rather than http://bablefish.altavista.com.
Aside from that, this sounds pretty bad... Hopefully with enough protest, and enough signatures on the petition the vote will swing back against software patents.
Ya dumb bastard. Is it so hard to check a URL before clicking submit?
With the new business methods patents, I'm sure it's only a matter of time. For example, Mills And Boon romantic novels are all produced according to a fixed style guide, with special packaging and marketing techniques. New English Library in the 1970s had a similar idea of producing a standardised, repetitive range of badly-written sensationalistic pulp fiction about contemporary youth culture (eg Richard Allen's skinhead series).
Although poor quality genre fiction is as old as books, such companies have greatly refined the production process, introducing standardisation and assembly-line-style quality control, to produce highly profitable ventures. Thus, it's hardly far-fetched to imagine a publisher patenting the combination of stylistic guidelines and marketing techniques involved in such ventures.
Imagine if John Campbell or some other founder of SF pulps had had the same idea... Or comic books...
It's only a matter of time (and insanity).
If you're a jock, inflict some pain / If you're a nerd then use your brain - DAPHNE AND CELESTE
...and I meant it. It's been way too long since I used C or C++ for very much (a shame, that; I like C a lot but haven't had the chance to use it for what I'm working on at the moment).
----------
If that don't sink this bill... I don't know what will.
--
This is the question I'd be most concerned with if I were in Europe.
What so many Slashdot readers don't understand is that many times, a lot of effort goes into developing a particular algorithm or piece of code. It is not unusual for a large corporation or entity to spend millions and millions of dollars in R&D. What the EU has done here is provide an insurance policy for innovative corporations and entities so that they can prevent their millions of dollars from being stolen and reengineered by freeloaders and open source extremists/terrorists. This is basic business-friendly practice and the United States has shown that business-friendly environments produce unprecedented prosperity (the Clinton administration notwithstanding.)
I'll be moderated down for this, but there is no reason why I should not be able to patent a piece of software that accomplishes a task and still be able to patent a piece of hardware that does the same thing. It's just common sense. I still despise the EU because it is essentially a conglomeration of socialist irreligious states but it is at least a bit encouraging to see that they got this right.
hmmmm . . .
hey, wait a minute .....
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Um, I think that was Alasteir Crowley. :)
yes, it is almost always possible to work around [software patents]
Let's see how you'd work around this:
- A web site does not sell merchandise; it has to support itself somehow <cough>banner ads</cough>.
- Banner ads nowadays must be animated, or no advertisers will apply.
- Unisys owns the LZW compression method (U.S. Patent 4,558,302 and foreign counterparts) used in all GIF images.
- The licensing terms for the LZW patent are incompatible with all free software licenses.
- The only other GIF-like animated graphics format supported by web browsers is MNG, and it only works in 6.x browsers such as Mozilla.
- It's possible to write a plug-in to display MNG images on pre-6.x browsers, but browsers reject unsigned plug-ins.
- Signing plug-ins requires a certificate from VeriSign, and this is beyond the budget of individual free software developers.
<_<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
I signed, deffinately. Even though im from North America too.... Screw these damn companys. The hell with them all.
I hope they burn.. HEY! Thats a good idea!
Nothing to add
Living in Norway, I'm just so sad to see that more and more of the "fascist and corporation-driven" culture sneak its way from the US over to us.
Historically, the "social-democratic" style of government over here has held back the "dark forces" of corporations, but 50 years with the USA as the world leader has taken its toll. Seeing your economical greatness, biz leaders try to fool us into giving them the same "freedom" that business has in the US.
We (geeks and other enligthned people) must fight them every inch of the way. Ironically, since the US is always making presedence, joining EFF is a good start for fighting corporatism. I say: "We gotta take the power back!"
This discussion isn't about IP. You can copyright code to prevent it from being stolen, but that isn't enough for them apparently. Now they want to be able to patent software.
In the real world, you can only patent a specific process, for example, using such and such robots in such and such way to automate the process of making a car as Volvo no doubt holds - but other car companies can use a different process that is equally automated. That's the way it is now with copyright on programs. You can't do it that specific way, but you're free to make something compatible that does the same but in a different way.
With the ability to patent software, you're not patenting a specific process anymore, but all processes that do the same thing, effectively ruling out all competition.
Software is already intellectual property, and that's a good thing. Nobody can take the Linux kernel and put it into their commercial program without keeping the kernel's source open, because Linux is the intellectual property of Linus Torvalds. Anybody is able, however, to create a kernel that does the same things as the Linux kernel but with different code, but under patent that wouldn't be possible anymore. If the UNIX kernel were patented instead of copyrighted, Linux wouldn't have existed...
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
And quoting him incorrectly too...
Crowley's Law is "Do what thou willt shall be the whole law".
The Wiccan Rede "An ye harm none, do what thou willt" is an adaptation of it.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
that's all I can say. Sad day...
What the hell is an unelected bunch of managers of an organisation doing making wide-reaching policy decisions such as this which should a matter for elected lawmakers
It's exactly this kind of crap which makes so many of us in England against tighter integration with the EU.
Rich
I get first dibs on 1-click buying
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
Of course Babelfish is at babel.altavista.com, not "bable". You'd think with all the bucks in /. the guys could afford to implement a link-checker in their production system.
On another note, I love the quasi-translations out of babelfish; for some reason one of the other mixed headlines makes me crack up: "Network against Kinderporno".
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
What kind of contingency plans do we have should software patents to be approved? If we can't get the governments to listen to us, what do we do? Keep on trying to draw support, or simply take Thoreau's advice to "Do what thou wilst will be the whole of the law" and ignore all this patent crap. We can't let the future of technology be placed into the hands of a few corrupt individuals, and it looks like we're going to fight them at every turn.
I've invested a great deal of effort in driving a car. Due to my great deal of effort, you should not be permitted to drive without paying me for permission to drive.
If a company is given a software patent he should only hold for at most 3 years I think is somewhat fair. As someone stated before patents can help protect the money invested in creating the software. Since software changes so much all the time and usefulness of thing can quickly vanish. I think that is a fair amount of time.
Do everything in internet years and the applicaton would have to be handled in say three month maximum.
patrick
actually, you WOULD be allowed to compile your own windows. just not distribute it to anyone else.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
This decision doesn't make it law yet, merely indicates and endorsement of the idea. The final decision will be made at a conference in November where the member states will make a final ruling on software patents.
I don't think it is enough to sent an email to the patent office pointing out that every ancient bibliography is nothing but a hyperlink and therefore hyperlinks can't be patented.
But again, this is a problem of the process and the offices/courts/admins and not of the patent itself.
patrick!
That's odd, my copy of IE and NS4 both display .PNG graphics just fine.
Hm, we should ask a patent-lawyer about this.
patrick!
the problem is not the patent but the expiry!
I'm trying to get some media coverage of the
terrible decision that is about to be made,
and I need some help in presenting the arguments.
The most difficult thing is to briefly explain
newcomers that although patents seem to serve
protection of Intellectual property, they do exactly the opposite.
Does anyone have (pointers to) examples of US
startups that had their innovations taken away
from them by a large company with a trivial patent
portofolio?
If it is all so bad, my audience asks me, how
come the american IT startups are still in existence and drive the stockmarket booms?
I noticed it is very difficult to find (european) politicians that know about the issue, or even
ones that know which fellow party members are
supposed to cover this topic.
Well, still two months to keep trying to convince
some people...
It is therefore vitally important that if you want something from getting patented by someone else, you publish it or disclose it. That applies no matter whether you want to use the method for proprietary or for open source purposes. The best thing to do is probably to make a disclosure directly to the patent office, in addition to publishing on USENET and (if you can) in some forum that is archived on paper.
And if you are with a commercial entity in the habit of patenting stuff, consider disclosing instead: it's much cheaper, quicker, and requires less time, and it protects you against infringement claims by others just as well as a patent.
Who will be first to patent the mouse pointing device in the E.U.?
The board of directors of the European Patent Office voted to allow the unrestricted patenting of software. The authority recommends the cancellation of the current clause of the European patent convention which states that computer programs "as such" are not patentable.
In doing so, the EPA placed itself in the same boat as the proponents of software patents -- mostly international corporations that want a change in the European legal situation towards one more similar to the United States and Japan, where where software is practically patentable without restriction. The German delegation in the 19-member EPA committee voted against the raid in 10-to-9 decision.
Programmers of free software as well as smaller software houses stand against software patents, since the potential danger of patent suits from larger corporations makes their work practically impossible. Already today large American companies protect themselves with numerous patents on minor developments - a move which also allows them to resist by counter suits if another enterprise files a patent infringement suit against them. However, free programmers and small companies do not have the financial means in order to be able to exact such a strategy and therefore formed an alliance against software patents.
The endorsement of software patents by the EPA modifies nothing in the existing legal situation, but serves as a preliminary decision for a conference in November, where the nations that have taken part in the EPA want to finally rule on the batter. At the beginning of of July, leaks from the European Union indicated that the organization did not want to permit American-style software patents in Europe. However, organizations, like the EuroLinux alliance and the Linux federation LIVE, pointed out that the commission had, at the time, already ruled itself as being basically unopposed to software patents.
A couple years ago, Bruce Perens penned Preparing for the Intellectual-property Offensive for LinuxWorld. It's an interesting perspective on the potential for the subversion of the patent system by unscrupulous (is there any other kind?) proprietary software vendors.
Some noteworthy ideas, including that of "open patent" development, which keeps resurfacing whenever patents are discussed, but doesn't really seem to have taken hold yet.
--
Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
H. Rap Brown