Stallman on Software Patents

An Anonymous Coward writes "On Monday Richard Stallman gave a speech at the Cambridge University (UK) Computer Lab. Over at ZDNet UK they have a transcription of the speech - the most eloquent discussion of the subject I have yet seen. Software patents victimise developers, he says, but there are ways to get around them. The best part is his comparison of writing software to writing symphonies: 'Oh Beethoven,' they would have said in 1800 if there had been patents on music, 'you're just bitching because you've got no ideas of your own.'"

Comments

Other Talk: Copyright vs Community

[thick_sliced]

Stallman also recently gave a talk at Queen Mary, University of London.
An audio version of the talk can be found at:

http://www.odl.qmul.ac.uk/stallman/

Re:Music

[Libor Vanek]

IIRC there is one "music" that is patented - sound of Harley ;-)

Re:Music

[mattbelcher]

That might sound funny, but I recall a case of a tennis player who patented his unique tennis stroke.

Public key cryptography patents, not "PGP patent"

[Xilman]

I was present at this event. Despite what ZDNet claims, RMS did not use the term "PGP patent" but, correctly, described it as the public key cryptography patent.

The "transcript" is abbreviated which is acceptable, maybe even laudable, but it is also an inaccurate record of what RMS actually said --- which is not.

IMO, Stallman gave an extremely good talk aimed at those who were not experts on how the patent system works in practice. Far more eloquent than I'd anticipated from his previous writings on this and related subjects.

Paul

Australian Patents Study?

[Skevos Mavros]

In his talk, Stallman says:

There was an Australian government study of the patent system in the 80s and this decided that aside from the fact of international pressure there was no reason to have the system.

And I thought to myself "Wow! My home country has a progressive attitude to patents, even back in the eighties! Good for us!". So I went looking for that study and instead I found this PDF (here is the Google HTMLised version) of a press release from the Australian Government announcing a more recent (1999-2000) nine-month study into patents, competitiveness, and the "new economy" entitled Inventing Our Future: The link between Australian patenting and basic science. The press release says, in part, that the study found:

The number of Australian-invented US patents in high-tech industries such as biotechnology and pharmaceuticals is growing faster than the world average.

This is a good thing in itself or as an indicator of activity in those sectors? And also:

The report, however, shows that Australia is below the world average in the overall number of patents as a proportion of GDP. Australia must increase its patenting activity by 70% to be at world average level.

This seems to imply that a higher number of patents as a proportion of GDP is a good thing. Is comparing the number of patents in relation to the GDP really a recognised measure of... something? :-)

Here's the PDF of the actual 1999-2000 report, which I have not yet read. Does anyone have a link to the 1980's Australian report into patents that Stallman refers to? It would be interesting to compare them.

Thanks in advance.

Re:Music Patents vs Software patents

[Anonymous Coward]

The engine example isn't always good. When the company i work for was acquired by a larger company, their lawyers came in and told us we needed to start looking for software we could patent. They used an engine example. They said that is the engine had been patented in a purposely obscure way, it could cover _all_ types of engines. So, if i had created an engine before the internal combustion engine, and had the forsight to create a patent that was obscure enough to cover all engines (who would have known at the time???), then i could reap royalties from all other engines ever made (until the patent expired).

Now, a large company is looking to protect their market. So anything they patent will be to prevent competition, and they recommend that we attempt to patent vague concepts. The lawyers do the work of submitting and following the process, the developers just come up with the ideas of what may be patentable. They are looking to patent something that will cover a large range of things, and then use that to prevent others from coming into their space.

For me, programmer X to patent something under my name is fine. I will probably be reasonable to others and let them use/expand on it for a minimal/no price. For MegaCorp Y to patent something, that something is effectively unavailable for someone else to market, even if MegaCorp isn't doing anything with the technlogy/idea.

I don't see why i can't look at how something works (not the source code, but just the idea/interface, etc), and have a moment of brilliance on how to improve it. If i implement my new idea for an old problem, and that old problem is patented, i may be infringing on someone elses patent, even though the guts of solving the problem are different than the original solution.