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.)
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.
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.
I entirely agree with this, but I'm not sure if this is the right question to be asking. The question is, is there a benefit to the public to award a time-limited monopoly (aka a patent) for those who bother to go out and discover these things, or isn't there one? If it benefits us, we should do it. If not, we shouldn't. Whether it was a process of invention or discovery is moot if we can somehow encourage addition invention or discovery. But I'm skeptical as to whether the benefits are real, or more substantial than the problems that also ensue...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
The following is (c) wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.
Patents originated in England with the Statute of Monopolies 1693 under King James I of England. Prior to this time, the King could issue letters patent providing any person with a monopoly to produce particular goods or provide particular services. This power was widely abused; thus Parliament restricted it through the Statute of Monopolies so that the King could only issue them to the inventors of original inventions for a fixed number of years. Section 6 of the Statute refers to "manner[s] of new manufacture...[by] inventors", and this section remains the foundation for patent law in England and Australia. The Statute of Monopolies was latter developed by the courts to produce modern patent law; this innovation was soon copied by other countries.
You know, there already were laws prior to the Declaration of Independence and the drafting of the Constitution..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
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.