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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.
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!
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!
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
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
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)
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?
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...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Except with something like the US situation where the examiners are simply not competant, in the area, to judge if the idea is obvious.
But rather than having a default of "fail" they operate a default of "pass" (and if it's invalid expect someone to be able to fight it out in court.)
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?
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.
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?
----------
So, once you've done all that work writing the code, do you want to get sued for patent infringement?
*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.
Then you get sued for writing your program.
Amen.
Now where are those mod points...
All opinions are my own - until criticized
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.
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?
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
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"
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
If that don't sink this bill... I don't know what will.
--
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?
A point that a lot of people have missed is that the 'common sense' argument you point out is currently held by the EU. Under EU law, you can patent software, but only if it exhibits a 'novel technical effect'. My understanding of it is that this disallows any mathematically based or internal algorithmic patents (eg, the RSA patent or one that I heard about where somebody effectively had a patent on a binary search), but allows patents of new ways to make a system behave (eg BTs patent on something that approximates hyperlinks, as discussed recently) as long as nobody can show prior art.
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
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.
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.
In short, copyright does nothing to hinder theft. It hinders copying.
Ofcourse laws and regulations don't prevent theft, because theft by definition breaks those laws and regulations. Copyrighting your code doesn't prevent it from being stolen, but it does give you a weapon to fight the thieves.
As for copying not being stealing - if what you copy is copyrighted and the way in which you copy it breaks that copyright, then it quite definitely equates to stealing.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
if the programmer of something wants to make money from his work, then he should be perfectly entitled to.
That's why they can copyright their code, to prevent it from being stolen. If they stay on the ball, they'll be able to outpace those who pick up the concept after them, because they have to start working on making something that does the same as your program all from scratch.
Unless ofcourse if the one who picks up the ball is Microsoft, but in that case you'd be screwed under patent too. Instead of outpacing you, they'd then simply buy you out or otherwise crush you and in the process get a hold of your patent.
See, when you patent code, you prevent anybody from making a program that does the same thing. You can sit back, relax, and rake in the cash. Under copyright, you'll have to stay on the ball, keep innovating, and Goddess forbid, actually fix bugs, otherwise other companies will pass you with their superior implimentation.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
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
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.
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