Slashdot Mirror
EU Moves Towards Single European Patent Standard
theodp writes "A European Parliament committee Tuesday moved toward setting the first pan-European standard for software patents, but outlawed the U.S. practice of patenting business methods, such as Amazon's one-click Internet shopping. 'The European law sets the right benchmark rather than the looser U.S. system,' said the director of public policy for Europe at the Business Software Alliance, which represents 20 software companies including Microsoft and Apple. Amazon representatives in Brussels declined to comment on the new European legislation."
He meant, "the European law sets the right benchmark rather than the loser U.S. system."
(Yeah, I know. I have no plans to quit my day job.)
It sounds like they have learned from some of the mistakes our
patent system has made.
Under the European law, software companies would obtain
exclusive rights only for programs that demonstrate novelty in
their "technical contribution."
Their reasoning: "We don't want to arrive at a model where
in the U.S. everything under the sun can be patented,"
I think they are approaching this from a better angle. I still
disagree with the general notion of patenting algorithms as
such. I don't think algorithms are invented any more than
mathematical truths are invented, rather they are discovered.
IMO, there is a difference and a patent shouldn't be granted on
that. Although, I will admit there is room to disagree with
that position.
It looks like they will be avoiding the major abuses we are
experiencing though, since you can patent a novel approach to
hand writing recognition, but not hand writing recognition in
general.
Now, the question is how do we get the U.S. government to adopt
this standard? Will it be like the Metric system, where we are
too entrenched to switch to a better system? Let's hope not for
our sakes.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
Perhaps the EU parliament (or whatever) isn't as useless after all. Though what will become out of this pan-European system in a few years? Let's keep our fingers crossed..
The US patent system was the first of its kind. The first version of anything is never the best version.
I just wish our government was less like those people that claim engine design peaked in the early 70s. (there are lots of them in the south)
Could someone please mention where patents on web based applications or "business-models" ( a cookie?) are actually valid?
Does a patent on a web technology apply to where the server is operating, who owns it or who's using it?
A piece of software is covered under copyright laws - the same way a piece of art or music is. If the EU go the route of the US in allowing software patents it damages software development in the long term.
Video Game cheats, hints a
hurray for europeans!!! first they gave us culture, then they gave us linux, now they give us some common sense
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
Unfortunatly, this report, from the Legal Affairs committee, does support software patents, ignoring the advice of the Industry committee, the Culture committee, and the vast majority of the response to their public consultation on the issue. Luckily, there is still time, as it has to pass the European parliament before coming EU law. So, to all European slashdotters, please make sure to contact your MEP about it (in a coherant, non-loony way) and explain why software patents are bad.
Amazon Tuesday patented the first pan-European standard for software patents. European representatives in Brussels declined to comment on the new Amazon patent.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
...is the software industry leaving the U.S. in droves for less litigious countries.
This is not my sandwich.
So rather than claiming a business method, European applicants will simply claim software useful in implementing a business method, while never actually using the words "business" or "method." For a skilled practitioner, the new EU guidelines don't seem to put up much in the way of a barrier.
Cute how its dressed up, but its telling that its the big players that want to lock themselves in with Patents who are backing this.
We had the most innovative time when there were no patents and lockins. Now the software market is dead, because the OS vendor locks the market down. Giving them more lock down tools in the form of patents is death for applications software.
No applications are developed, nothing new is in the market and it has nothing to do with patents, and everything to do with market lock.
That must have been hard to sort out... :)
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
As I stated, there is room to argue on this point. Most of the difference hinges on definitions. Such as defining the difference between an act of Creation and an act of Discovery. Is it an act of observation, or an act of Imagination? There are some things that if that person had not lived, and had not produced those works (Shakespeare, Mozart) the world likely never would have benefitted from them. There are others that we would have regardless (Electricity, Projectiles). The problem is with those things in between these two extremes. It's not 100% clear cut which way it should go in some cases. I can understand allowing limited patents on certain algorithms, however others are ludicrous. Thus my problem on simply allowing patents on algorithms. It depends greatly on the algorithm and whether or not it was truly an act of Creation or of Discovery.
What I do like about their version of this law is that it has to be Novel, pushing those patented towards the more rigorous side of the spectrum.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
An equally large, and relevant, problem is the lawsuit culture present in the US. The reason everyone is trying to patent every possible idea no matter how abstract is that it our legal system tolerates lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit. Instead of providing relief for a party that has been wronged, it has become a lottery, where the price a patent application could win you a big cash settlement.
Now I believe that the current patent system is badly broken and in need of a massive overhaul, but how much of the change should be made in the patent system, and how much in the courts?
This is a wide-open door through which even the most rediculously obvious software patents could (and therefore will) slip.
Please please please don't let yourselves think that this is anything other than the EU getting a patent system open to virtually all of the abuses demonstrated in the US.
I just sent the following to my MEP, find your MEP's email address and contact them NOW before it is too late (people in the UK can find their members here)!:
"We don't want to arrive at a model where in the U.S. everything under the sun can be patented," said Ilias Konteas of the Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe
This is not actually good news, despite the spin. Software patents are absurd, and this still basically hands Big American Corporations (TM) the European software industry on a plate.
/. a while back - I find it scary that the West is busy building castles of I.P. in the sky, while its native manufacturing base is dissolved. When all the West "has" is information,less than pieces of paper and infinitely copyable, and the billions in India and China have all the factories, then we'll see how much real value I."P". has.
On the sorta-plus side, in the long term, the very concept of I.P. might be pushed closer to collapsing under its own weight. The USA and now the EU are deluding themselves if they think that China will continue to honour Western I.P. laws for ever. To echo a post on
Choice of masters is not freedom.
The Yahoo story and the slashdot blurb have both been (intentionally) misled. Under this directive anything "technical" can be patented. Programs running on a computer are technical. Business methods implemented "with a computer network" are technical.
In the future, european businesses will compete, not on programming, but on paying patent lawyers. Remember: just because you wrote a program yourself doesn't mean you'll be allowed to distribute it. The result? Punishing innovation.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
The European Commission has proposed to override the current clear and uniform European patentability rules (Art 52 EPC: "mathematical methods, schemes and rules for mental activity, methods of doing business and programs for computers are not patentable inventions") and replace them by a confusing set of nationally implementable rules which authorise patenting of algorithms and business methods, as it has been practised at the European Patent Office (EPO), openly since 1998 and more or less covertly since 1986.
The "European Parliament committee" cited in the article is the European Parliament's Commission on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market (JURI). Some members of this comittee submitted amendments to the European Commission's software patent directive proposal. While some Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are asking to bring the directive in line with Art 52 EPC so as to clearly restate that programs for computers are not patentable inventions, another group of MEPs is endorsing the EPO's recent practice of unlimited patentability, shrouded in more or less euphemistic wordings.
What happened Tuesday is the vote of some pro-software-patenting amendements by the JURI. Theese amendments will now be presented to the plenary of the European Perliament for decision during the first week of either july or september.
It's definitely VERY BAD news.
This site summarizes the situation and the efforts from all around Europe to fight software patenting.
Since I am trying to patent some stuff right now, I actually know a thing or two about patents. I'll try to straighten out some of the questionmarks and misconceptions that seem prevalient.
In Europe, the patents can be issued for the entire union from the central office. This is much more expensive than in the US, primarily because everything has to get professional, technical transaltions into three langauges. However, even though the patents are issued for the entire EU, they are actually enforced locally in each country. Different European countries have different criteria and standards, the same patent may very well be ruled to apply in one country but not in another. I think the article deals with some guidlines regarding software and business methods; I don't believe it will change the overall picture and it should be seen in that context.
Some quick points about software and business methods in the US. In general, for these to be patentable, they must fulfill the following (these are some of the important conditions in lay mans terms):
-It must be new, in other words no records that anyone has ever done it before
-It must provide a tangible benefit - pure mathematics or very abstract and general algorithms do not work
-It cannot be obvious, even to professionals in the field
-The inventor must demonstrate that he or she actually knows how to implement it (preferably by doing so)
- The patent is only valid for the implementation that the inventor describes
These are actually quite reasonable conditions, wouldn't you say? I have not read the infamous one-click shopping patent, but note that generally speaking it is not possible to patent "shopping by only one click", you have to describe how you do it, and the patent is only valid for that implementation. Of course, sometimes it is possible to be quite general in the description, such as "save the customer's info in a memory, recognize customer by a cookie, initiate transaction based on saved data when customer clicks shopping button". On top of that the one-click patent is questionable from the obviousness criterium.
I wish to point out, however, that the set of patents that get discussed on Slashdot are the examples of extreme outliers when it comes to obviousness and generality. Frequently they are also misunderstood and exagerated, either by the original magazine, the story submitter or both.
For example, a few weeks ago there was a story on Amazon patenting selling used items next to new ones. A dozen people got 5, insightful ratings for pointing out how crazy this was. In fact, the patent only covered a specific technique of soliciting new sellers (or something similar).
Tor
Chilling effects for Europe. This must be bad indeed. They have no sense of personal freedom. They are drones. They have no sacred to God constitution like ourselves.
Poor bastards.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Ok, well seeing as my karma is slipping away due to a "flamebait" mod I'll carry on with my thinking :-)
I see the drug companies as similar to the bread making companies. Both have a recepie, both make money out of baking and selling the outcome. One does this without the need for patents. In fact, asprin tablet makers still manage to make lots money and stay in business despite there no longer (or even ever) being patents on asprin. So, in the end I think that the "drugs companies" issue is a bogus arguement. I also notice that the drug manufacturers are amongst the biggest an most monopolistic of companies. We end up paying huge premiums as a result of this either to health insurance companies or in taxes to our health services.
If the FDA wanted to level the playing field they could do this by ensuring that any new *brand* of drug has to go through trials and test, just like the original.
Sorry to bore you all, come on give me another flamebait (idiot moderator!).
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
1) Make sure you don't infringe patents, like
"Use of hyperlinks in a computer program for an automation application and programmed computer for such an application"
"Method and system including a server, client-terminal, computer and computer program, delivering sound data"
"A computer system and a program install method thereof"
2) When you've found the 100 or so patents your program-to-be infringes, get a deal with all the inventors. (If some of them are slippery, you can probably "invent around" their claim in a couple of months)
3) Pay IBM for not starting a lawsuit you can't afford
4) (Minor step) Write your program
5) Sell it (hoping you won't be victim of a submarine patent)
6) PROFIT!!! (for your lawyer)
Nahhh, on the other hand, just drop developing, and become lawyer yourself (or take advantage of our generous social system, if being a "productive member of the society" is not your cup of tea)
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
I don't think algorithms are invented any more than mathematical truths are invented, rather they are discovered.
Well, every invention is just a 'discovery' in some sense. I mean, take for example child-proof caps for medicine. Someone 'discovered' there was a way to make a cap that wouldn't open unless pushed. Someone 'discovered' that making a tire in a certain shape would pull water off the ground and make driving safer. Someone 'discovered' that you could setup transistors in a certain way to make double data rate DRAM. All of these are discoveries as much as something like realizing that you could delete audio information that would be filtered out by the brain as a way to save space.
The important thing in my mind is to filter out the 'obvious' things from the truly innovative. It's 'obvious' to use base-64 encoding in DNS for international domain names. 1-click shopping is 'obvious', etc.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
but...
Software development is a global business. Changes in one market affects development everywhere, not just developers that happen to live in that market.
Tor
This article is a lie of the Patent lobby. Ask the free software foundation Europe or FFII to learn more about these persons.
FFFII has the real story. Nice Quotes from HÃ¥kon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Inc, Richard Clark, CEO of Elysium Co Ldt and chief editor for the JPEG standardisation committee, Bernd Runge of SAP AG, Bernhard Kaindl of SuSE GmbH, Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz, professor of Public Law and European Law, Aoyama Gakuin Daigaku, Tokyo, Jozef Halbersztadt, patent examiner at the Polish Patent Office and others.
She answered in THE GUARDIAN:/ 0,3605,9751 26,00.html
e x.en.ht ml
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story
McCarthy about GPL: "which moreover is not "free", but is actually a different form of monopoly by imposing a copyright licence system on users."
More general information from FFII:
http://swpat.ffii.org/akteure/mccarthy/ind
What about software patents that cannot be patented in the EU at this time, but which already apply in the US?
Will companies be able to apply for these patents as soon as software patents are allowed in the EU? Wouldn't that technically be considered prior art in the EU?
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
* From: Hartmut Pilch <phm@xxxxxx>
* To: news@xxxxxxxx, <patents@xxxxxxxx>
* Subject: McCarthy wins in JURI
* Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 13:04:55 +0200 (CEST)
The JURI vote was delayed by 2 hours. Our little conference was thereby made impossible. Around 13.00 the voting was pushed through in 20 minutes, and McCarthy won a majority on all points, which means
- introduction of program claims
- refusal of interoperability privilege (ITRE 15)
- refusal of definition of "technical"
- what is new needn't be technical and what is technical needn't be new
- no need for a technical solution, only problem must be technical
- additional rationales for patentability (e.g. need to make money from licensing in view of low-cost economies)
etc.
McCarthy was subsequently surrounded by congratulating journalists and explained them that she only wanted to harmonise the status quo, wasn't legalising software patents, was against US-style patenting of algorithms and business methods, would not hurt opensource software etc. Some of these journalists also had a chance to meet Erik and Alex who watched the session.
A collection of statements and documentation about the JURI vote is found at
http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/juri0617/
--
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation http://swpat.ffii.org/
145,000 votes 400 firms against software patents http://noepatents.org/
The UK government carried out an extensive consultation and came to the conclusion it was best not to allow software patents. This is effectively a continuation of current legislation, where software has been adequately protected by copyright for the past few decades.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
This ./ article is very misleading
/everything under the sun/ be patentable, just as in the US, as long as a computer is somehow involved.
All the juri rapporteur and the European commission have done is to cloud the issue in confusion.
At the heart of the proposal lies a text that makes
The effect of the cloud of confusion is to make people think that actually the EU has a more restrictive system than the US, but patent lawyers will know better.
'technical contribution' is completely undefined and the clear limit of article 52(2)c, an explicit ban on software patents is removed.
That means that business methods like 'selling cucumbers with the aid of a data-transmission device' will be patentable. As long as 'business' is not mentioned in the claim.
Do some background reading (www.ffii.org) before you post nonsense like 'EU will get better patent regime than US'
See this petition signed by the leading European computer scientists, including Robin Milner (Turing Award) and Géraud Sénizergues (Godel Award):
The message is in Catalan, but contains the full text of the petition in English with list of signatories. The petition explicitly warns against claims that only patents with "technical contribution" will be granted, when the practice of the patent office has opened the door to anything being considered technical.