Slashdot Mirror
From Legal Wordings to Economic Reality
Holger Blasum writes "The directive on software patents in
Europe is (currently) scheduled in the European
Parliament mid June, so the
7-8 May parliament hearing on
Software Patents: from legal wordings
to economic reality might be a good
opportunity to make your views heard in
Brussels. There is some support for accomodation, and hitchhikers or taxistop might ease getting there. If you cannot attend, find (and invite) your EU representative
here (hint: this database does not include so many email addresses, so it would not be wise to go for this in the very last minute; if the options overwhelm you try the "Legal affairs committee", and/or the persons you are likely to vote for in the 2004 elections)."
I think we'll soon see XOR masks patented in the EU ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You know... if software patents get approved of in Europe, there will be an influence in the US, too.
As in "killing Free Software". Which I guess is why Lawrence Lessig and Richard Stallman travel around the globe twice in 24 hours to come to this conference...
And hey, even if this were actually just about the EU, it might be worth reading!
I'm an American, and since I know how much you Europeans despise us, I think the best wake-up call for you guys is to remind you that SW patents will completely and utterly favor us Americans.
MSFT is American. IBM is American. Oracle is American. Americans have had years of experience developing patented SW technology. The only pieces of SW that I can think of that is European is SAP and MP3.
If Europeans decided to adopt SW patents, the US would eat you guys alive! They would send all their lawyers to Europe and patent everything and your mother. Not because we are smarter, but because we have much more experience in thinking of how to patent things.
How the hell could Europeans trust US technology, especially after things like Echelon being used to provide business intelligence against European bids?
The only way to do it is to keep Europe SW Patent free and allow Linux to develop unfettered, including using American patented SW technology freely. Right now, the only way that Europe will ever get an edge over the US is through Linux. European govenments don't have to worry about any backdoors in Windows, they don't have to worry about paying extra fees, or being held hostage by the patent developed by US companies.
The way it's going now, with all this patent tyranny that is going on the in the US, the only safe haven for Linux is in Europe, if and only if they keep patents out of Europe!
Call your representative and stop this insidious process of patentizing Europe!!!
People of EU you are realy needed there. Or feel the consequence.
Patenst will kill of small bis.
Patents will kill free sofware and yes Linux (GNU/Linux)
patents will make you pay like hell for software
patents give the big boys al the power.
Please make suer EU will be counter weight against USA.
Think about SCO vs IBM and free software. Well think of hunderd more cases against GNU/Linux.
Its time to ACT NOW!
SW Patents will lock programers after bars.
SW Patents wiil kill innovation.
SW Patenst will get you to pay the big boys more!
So come to Brussels and sowe the parlement that you don't agree!
Each representative has a declaration of financial interest in his page. ANyone knows where I can find that for US senators/congressmen?
you basically can find that information at opensecrets.org
my pet machine
MSFT is American. IBM is American. Oracle is American. Americans have had years of experience developing patented SW technology. The only pieces of SW that I can think of that is European is SAP and MP3. If Europeans decided to adopt SW patents, the US would eat you guys alive! They would send all their lawyers to Europe and patent everything and your mother. Not because we are smarter, but because we have much more experience in thinking of how to patent things.
I'm an American, and since I know how much you Europeans despise us, I think the best wake-up call for you guys is to remind you that SW patents will completely and utterly favor us Americans. How the hell could Europeans trust US technology, especially after things like Echelon being used to provide business intelligence against European bids?
The only way to do it is to keep Europe SW Patent free and allow Linux to develop unfettered, including using American patented SW technology freely. Right now, the only way that Europe will ever get an edge over the US is through Linux. European govenments don't have to worry about any backdoors in Windows, they don't have to worry about paying extra fees, or being held hostage by the patent developed by US companies. Call your representative and stop this insidious process of patentizing Europe. The way it's going now, with all this patent tyranny that is going on the in the US, the only safe haven for Linux is in Europe, if and only if they keep patents out of Europe.
I'm damn tempted to get my voice heard. I have three innovative ideas which I feel will make me money.
Now it costs quite a bit of money to implement even one of these ideas. That and about a year of my time. Thing is, that will mean I just don't really have the money to patent my invention!
Not only that, but most innovation is done by younger people (yadayada exceptions, yadayada). These people create new companies, employment and wealth. But patenting (and it's related cost) impedes this process and favours established, already wealthy companies.
And I'll go one further; patenting used to make sence, but for a number of reasons is making less and less sense. Not only do we see the so-called 'submarine' patents, but also a profilation of IP companies which do not even produce the IP (just buy it in...that's how MS-DOS happened, btw). Patenting in this way stiffles innovation, which is what it was supposed to engender to start with!
Then consider the fact of paralel invention. It happens a lot...two people think and/or devellop the printing press, the telephone, the airplane etc etc etc, at roughly the same time, independent of each other. There are just certain ideas who's time has come.
Couple that with the fact of population growth and you'll find that that sort of thing will happen (and is happening) more and more often.
If you have an idea, I think you should (help) develop it. If you just sit on it, you should get squat.
Hmmm...I'm gonna think this out a bit more and put it to paper...
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Patents and copyright laws could have been what actually built a software industry in the United States.
Not by a mile. The current crop of big boys grew up in a far more lenient environment. Phoenix reverse engineered the BIOS from IBM's PC, which was a major contributor to the PC explosion. Nowadays, they'd be convicted felons. Sure, there was also a lot of patented stuff, such as the stuff from PARC, and the mountains of patents that IBM holds, but we didn't have to contend with any of the foolishness that we have today, like one-click patents, BT claiming rights to all of hypertext, and a small company staffed with lawyers holding a major part of the industry hostage for years (guess which one and win a prize!). Do anything innovative today and, should it be marketable, you may find that someone has filed a patent for it based on your product.
In conclusion, America is a land of contrasts.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
> to clarify: I ment "what exactly could be patented?"
e nts.ht mlc -india.h tml
Whole applications won't be patentable, algorithms will.
This sucks because M$ could patent the algorithim used to write a certain file format. Then we wouldn't be allowed to reverse engineer, say, MS Word Docs.
This makes their monopoly much tougher. For a great read, try:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/stallman-pat
or
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman-me
Stallman gives a very clear explanation of the history, stupidity, uselessness, and problems of software patents. (he's really an excellent speaker & writer.)
Ciaran O'Riordan
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I am afraid that you are preaching for the wrong folks. We all know that - the problem is that our politicians is stupid enough to not know that. They take their advice from the lobbyist that is paid by the american IT-firms..
True.
However, you forget all the embedded software that companies like Infineon, Philips and ST Microelectronics put in their ICs. A lot of this is patented as well and might even work against e.g. MZFT.
Furthermore, a European Software Patent Directive is nice, but for most countries, patents are issued via the European Patent Office (EPO). This Office grants some software stuff, but has more than once made very clear they definitely will refuse anything that does not have any tech stuff in it. This kind of applications doesn't even get searched. It happens, I have seen it more than once.
And when an examiner makes a mistake, you can always file an opposition, in which you can actively fight the patent before the EPO (instead of the passive re-examination before the USPTO).
Furthermore, the EPO is not bound by EU legislation. I do remember a previous discussion that this was wrong, but in this case, it might be a good thing to free software. (ok, there are some 'buts')
As a sidestep, please think about the following question: why should something that is patentable when you implement it with hardware, not be patentable/ protected when implemented in software?