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European Software Patent Horror Gallery
siggifiggi writes "Heise has a news-item about a list of trivial and stupid patents already granted in Europe. The list was created by the Association for the Promotion of a Free Informational Infrastructure." The best one is the patent on controlling one computer from another (which would technically include controlling your computer with a keyboard that had a microchip in it, to say nothing of telnet!
My favorite patent is Visualising a Process: Visualise functions by graphically displaying their components, allowing iterations on the screen and creating a flow chart from these iterations.
I guess that would make Doom for SysAdmins illegal in Europe. America will remain the leader in shotgun based process management!
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Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
So, Linux and Windows NT (just to name two of them) must be violating this patent, right?
It's publication date is 1995, March 22th. Okay, we can debate about which OS classifies as the first multitasking system - probably Multics which was 'invented' in 1965, 30 year earlier!
(I am not sure that Multics is actually the first since I'm not that old yet ;)
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
This is also good as it shows how many dumb patents have been issued by the European office. My favorite so far is "controlling one computer by another", which they say telnet does. I think that this is the beginning of patent reform. Maybe this will open the eyes of the US, European, and Asian patent offices and make them realize that they are issuing patents on 20 year old technology and obvious technology.
The biggest problem with the patent arena is that it is filled with laywers. If it were up to many technologists I think the ideas would be more likely open like the HTML, XML, IEEE, and RFC standards are. I know that I'd like to see much of these ideas open rather than closed.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
here's the direct link FYI. Ah, god bless Mac's URL embedding! :)
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
On the FFII mailing list it has just been reported that the EPO Diplomatic Conference today voted unanimously to maintain the exception in Art 52.2c this time. This means that Europe will be still free of (pure) software patents.
Unfortunately the Fight isn't over yet. The next round will be in European Union. It is therefore very important and urgent, if you consider software patents to be more harmful than useful, to send your opinion by email to:
consultation@eurolinux.org
as soon as possible and, in any case, before December 15th, 2000. You can write in the official language of any member country of the European Union.
Ville
My DeCSS archive:
Cool. The entire internet has been patented. Think how much that lawsuit could win them!
Cisco's worth quite a bit these days.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
Patents are a good thing to protect ones intellectual property. But I have a hard time believing that whoever owns the EU patent on hypertext preprocessing actually came up with the idea. If so, they're morons for allowing preprocessing to go on without collecting whatever royalties. Patents are not meant to give people rights over someone elses ideas for all of eternity, they're simply meant to give someone rights over their own ideas and creations. Patent squatting is rediculous, and getting patents just to have them even more so. To take out a patent and not actually use it in some ways devalues the entire idea of the patent. (Is the patent patented? Hmm...)
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everyone was born right-handed, only the greatest overcome it.
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everyone was born right-handed, only the greatest overcome it.
http://leftorium.net
but the European Patent Office (EPO) has tried to bend this rule by saying that a computer program with a 'technical effect' is not a computer program 'as such'.
I think the generic term you are looking for is "fraud".
You should be allowed to charge filers (And Granters) of patents like these with fraud, because that's really what it is.
Problem is that as in the US criminal law tends to have a blind spot towards crimes commited by organisations. How does a system set up dealing with individuals handle a corporate entity? At some point, even in a civil action brought after the organisation has been "killed" the guilty people need to be identified.
I bet people would research their patents a lot more thoroughly before submitting them if this was the case, and I bet the PTO would be a lot less likely to rubber stamp them through and let the courts settle things.
Part of the problem appears to be patent examiners too eager to pass a patent. The point of the application should be to convince a skeptic. If the examiner is not convinced or dosn't understand the application then it should be dismissed. Maybe something like a criminal court is needed for examinging patents, rather than the current system.
Let them write any law they want, it'll be invalidated/overturned at the very first challange anyways. However, until it is, it's still a law and is to be obeyed, and it's suprisingly difficult and expensive for an average person to fight a law. And the more people cave in because it's simpler the stronger it becomes.
Also you can't challange a law simply by objecting to a cop and taking the case to the highest court is a rather ticky job for a convicted criminal. In theory whilst the original trial judge might be obliged to dismiss the case (and find the prosecution in contempt) the chances of this happening are remote.
Legally challenging a law is likely to be at least as hard as lobbying not to have it passed in the first place. Wonder how hard it is for a third party to get a patent application dismissed...
--bdj
Like... screenplays and novels!
Patent 57. A plot device whereby invaders from space initiate an attack, but are destroyed due to a fatal susceptability.
examples:
War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells) (Earth germs)
Independence Day (computer germs)
Mars Attacks (country music)
Ok, so where is Mr. T. vs. Software patents?
He needs to round up these jibber-jabberin' bozos, drive them in his very fast van to the coast and then throw them helluva far. He's tough.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
And another on engineers. I will thus own all patents, and all engineers who might invent something patentable. Thus, I will have a monopoly (for which I am filing one of those neat new "business methodology" patents...) on all things (for which I will, by extension, have a patent)
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
These patent offices must really be dredging the bottom of the barrel.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Then sue the patent office, claiming that their website infringes on your patent!
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I've got a few people I'd like to send a fart greeting card to. Now the trick is to get the scent to be released when they open the card...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The only way to defend yourself against this is to have your own portfolio of patents so that when they say "You're using telnet! We're going to sue you" you can say "Oh yeah? Well you're using printf, so we're going to sue you too!" Then you settle down into a cross licensing agreement so that you can use telnet and the other guy can use printf.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Or the free(speech) pcanywhere clone commonly known as Back Orifice 2000, released under GNU GPL by cDc Communications.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If there's any item on this list that's a joke someone slipped by the examiners, this is it. The technical claim describes in excrutiating detail what's involved in "converting at least a portion of the ASCII path name... and sequentially writing said unparsed string, character by character, into said buffer..."
I wonder what else is in my 1990 Turbo C++ "stdlib.h" library which is now a patent violation?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Ah hah!
Patent 58. A plot device whereby the protagonist(s) is/are rescued from impending doom by unforseeable circumstances.
I have patented the Deus Ex Machina! MPAA, you are MINE! MUAHAHAHA!!!!
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Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
I don't think they are really validated. In Europe, patents can only validated by a judge. A little example: you have a patent on 'telnet' and I am selling an telnet application. You can go to a court to let a judge prohibit this. On that occasion the judge will decide whether your patent is valid or not. Koen
CmdrTaco, expect a letter in the mail shortly from our lawyers.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Of course, to them, a patent, even stupid ones, are excellent exploitation results. Most of the times, when commercialisation of the product becomes hard ro too expensive, a patent is a good way to justify the funding.
I am not sure which one is evil, EC officers or european companies/universities...
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
Such things already exist. They're called "journals". (Actually, any public method of publication will do, but journals are the best.) The problem comes when the patent office doesn't adequately search these for prior art. If the patent office can't adequately search journals (and it's not as if databases of journal literature don't exist), what makes you think they could competently search any other database?
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
1. WTF does this site have to do with first-to-file vs. first-to-invent? Are you claiming that if Europe was first-to-invent, none of these would have been granted? Poppycock. They're two orthogonal issues. After all, the US has plenty of stupid software patents despite being first-to-invent.
2. The US constitution says nothing about whether the US patent system should be first-to-file or first-to-invent. Switching to first-to-file would not require a consitutional amendment.
3. It's a common misconception that first-to-invent is better for small inventors. The flawed logic goes, "Well, large corps can write up a patent application faster than the individual inventor, so even if they invented something a few months later than the individual inventor, they can still get the application in first." That's true to an extent. What people fail to realize is that first-to-invent is even worse for the individual inventor. With first-to-file, if a large corp and an individual inventor have filed applications for the same invention, a court will simply look at the "date received" stamp on the application, and whoever has the earlier date wins. With first-to-invent, the individual inventor comes to court with his one mediocre patent lawyer, and the large corp comes to court with their dozens of crack attorneys, and each tries to prove that they "invented" this invention before the other. Who do you think will win?
With first-to-file, yes, there's an advantage to being able to file quickly, but there's also not much room for legal wrangling if you weren't the first to file.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Does the EU have the concept of "prior art" as embodied in U.S. law? Many of the so-called 'patents' in the list would be invalidated under this test. Does the EU not recognize this, or is it just that the examiners don't realize that many of these concepts have actually been implemented and have been in use for years?
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
The whole thing could be solved by the registering of "unpatents". Allow companies and individuals to register technologies and idea in a way that simply sets up and official registry of "prior use." Then, make it simpler to register "prior use" then to register a patent. That would help take care of part of the problem.
Look.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a company taking out a patent on something that may appear outwardly to be "stupid."
Many companies do this on a regular basis simply to ensure that no one else can get that patent and possibly prevent them from using the idea/technology.
The problem arises when companies actually begin to try and enforce their "stupid" patents (can we say 'one-click shopping?'). It is at that point, when companies begin to enforce stupidity that we should go to the Courts and overturn such things.
There. I feel better.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
It is very important to note that these patents represent threats to European software developers in the future, rather than things which have already happened.
The European Patent Convention (EPC) specifically forbids patents on computer programs, but the European Patent Office (EPO) has tried to bend this rule by saying that a computer program with a 'technical effect' is not a computer program 'as such'. This has allowed them to start granting patents on software even though software is clearly excluded by the EPC. So all the computer programs described in this patent horror gallery are considered by the EPO as not being computer programs 'as such'.
However, not everyone agrees with this ingenious new definition. So 'software patents' as granted by the EPO are not necessarily enforceable. But what the EPO is now trying to do is to have the law changed so that they can happily grant software patents without the inconvenience of having to redefine terms used by existing laws. If software is made patentable, all the software patents granted will suddenly become enforceable and leave European companies open to attack.
So it's not too late to do something about this. The European Commission is holding a publi c consultation asking for comments on whether the law should be changed, and many national patent offices are doing the same. (The EPO and EPC are not part of the European Union, but there is an overlapping membership and many countries are waiting for the Commission to make a recommendation.)
Also sign EuroLinux's petition which gives some links for more information about what I wrote above.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Thank God I live in the good old US of A, where we dont have this kind of problem with the patent office....uh...wait, nevermind...
Of course best of all is just not allowing patents on software (Or business processes.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Bernhard Lang writes:
is proposed by EPO, so that it can change the EPC (european patent convention, i.e. the very text under discussion) to put it in agreement with other international treaties. Agreement is of course what the EPO considers as agreement. For example, if EPC 52.2 modification does not pass, but EPC 33 does, EPO could decide that its interpretation of the TRIPS agreement requires to remove EPC 52.2 and allows patenting software, or what else. Given the past record of the EPO, their propensity to bend rules that have been fixed, you can guess what will happen if you give them the right to change the rules according to their own assessment of the situation.
By the way, it is not clear that all countries are aware of what is hidden in the proposed modification of 33. More national lobbying and information has beenshould be done on that issue.
Okay class, lets say the phrase we just learned... "I dream of america where my underwear flap is not covered by five simultaneous patents, and where the drugs can come in generic form."
Good class.
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