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More on European Software Patents
pdajames writes "An article at ZDNet UK says that the EU bureaucrats aren't even considering the numerous anti-software patenting opinions out there. According to a well-connected lobbyist group, they have determined there will be patents, and the only question is what kind."
They all resigned a few years back as they were in the pockets of big business. Looks like they still are. Undemocratic as ever.
Then, rewrite him with extensive informations, if possible comments of small companies, etc. Sorry my own links are in French ;-) but I'm sure you could find many links against software patents, with models letters to send to your MEP, etc.
Another good method is to check some (already granted, even if near illegally) EU patents, and send a mail to the potential affected companies you could know.
One thing with EU patents is that the majority of people, developers and companies, absolutely don't know about them, and when asked about, they absolutely don't know the potential risks of software patents. So pattents lobbiers carefully presents patents as a good thing of course.
The only thing to do then is to spread the information ! we only have 2 months !!
With the Increasing power of Asian nations in software, we need to make sure that they can't patent them there either.
IANAL, but wouldn't this mean the patent is effective for 27-30 years instead of 20 years, as the 'invention' still has protection while it's pending? And if the IP firm working the system can come up with enough variations, alterations, and improvements they can keep the patent from being issued indefinitely. What a bonus!
The simple fact is that IT moves too damn fast for software patents to be anything other than nuisances at best and corporate genocide at worst.
I'm going to mail my MEPs about this and I hope that any other Eurolanders checking this thread out will too.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
Your right that there are good points about software patents
however they also stop inovation because patents mean that the only people who can advance in a technology is the people who have the patent and then if they decide not to advance it then we just lose out.
using a rather extreme example
imagine if you found a way to solve world hunger but found out you couldnt because one of the mechanics of the process was patented
also no software patents does not necesarily mean losing all advantages
i mean there is no law against not telling anyone about it untill you have finished your product
its just that once you have unveiled your product to the world everyone is free to advance that technology rather than just a limited amount of people who probably wont do as good a job as the many
I'm not sure that having party leaders nosh with arbitrary members of the public is really the best way to run a representative democracy. These guys can't be experts on every issue that passes their way; that's why they have advisers. Make contact, get yourself talking to these advisers, and make a strong case why your position is good for everyone and the alternative is bad.
Accept that there are other points of view here, and accept that anything which harms industry, or appears on the surface to harm industry, is going to need a hell of a good reason to explain to journalists when they're asking why $megacorp is pulling out of $country with the loss of $number jobs.
These guys don't read slashdot; stuff that is obviously FUD to you or I isn't necessarily going to be self-evident to them. And other people will have alternate issues which are in conflict with yours. That's life. Laurence Lessig keeps ranting about this; we make wonderful cases why Thing Is Bad on slashdot, but damned if we follow through and start explaining to our representatives. Go, gain their ear.
Dave
Maybe what the Open Source community needs to do is provide a mechanism or resources for challenging ludicrous patents. We've seen sporadic requests on /. calling for examples of prior art when some of the more egregious patents are issued. Perhaps this could be a regular part of the main /. page (just a one line description and link to details). While it would be nice to catch these frauds before they are issued it's more likely that we'd only hear about them after issuance. With the number and caliber of readers this site has to offer we could provide valuable assistance to those who could actually mount the challenge (e.g., EFF?).
In the meantime, let's keep working on the various legislatures to reduce the patent periods and increase the requirements of proof to show that a patent should be awarded in the first place. We should also make sure that patent examiners are rewarded for proper behavior (in the US, patent examiners are paid on a "piece work" basis so there is little incentive to challenge the validity of an application).
The argument against software patents is made on three grounds:
1. the products of the software industry are so large and complex (because of the lack of physical constraints) that the scale of 'invention' is hundreds times greater than in the physical world.
2. patents are expensive (10k Euro in Europe) and rarely can small businesses or individuals afford to aquire them.
3. even when people overcome point 2, they find that the large patent portfolios of large companies render their patents useless.
Conclusion: large companies purchase patents in order to protect not their inventions, but their competitive advantage. Since innovation comes from smaller teams, patents thus work against innovation.
Software patents exaggerate what is a manageable problem with physical patents, and turn it into a serious problem for smaller designers. Basically patents allow large businesses to collaborate with burocracy to create barriers against the entrance of smaller groups.
This is bad, corrupt, and economically stupid.
End of argument.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
As I see it the problem with software patents is that it will mainly affect open source projects which are easy targets for patents (obviously you can search through the source code) and in most cases don't generate profit. Closed source projects in most cases done purely for profit will probably slip through the net if they infringe a patent because the source code if far from accessable. Surely, it is the second instance which you would want to protect your work from?!?! The other problem I see is that many of these patents seem to have such broad definitions masses of innovation will be stiffled because a patent will encompass wide areas of work!
Infiltrated by corporate mafia- You bet! someday you may elect a leader and have the result overturned by the courts. After that, your country can invade a Middle Eastern country in the name of bringing democracy to their people. Here in the US, the government IS the corporate mafia- Have a burger and wave a flag- it'll make you feel better.
The French patent office is supposed to be the strictest in the EU. Yet they let completely obvious patents slip through. I've met a person who once spent a few days crafting some totally ridiculous patents, just to show how very lax the French patent office already is. (One of the patents was for business information systems software, where the "innovation" is that the CEO can get the average of the prices of his company's wares). This person said that you can get basically anything patented like this:
I repeat, this is for the French patent office, supposedly the strictest of all. If you think about it, patent offices have an interest in granting patents, not rejecting them. Why? After a rejection, the applicant will come back and haunt them for explanations, apellations, etc. After a grant, any contests to the patent is done in court, which makes it Somebody Else's Problem from the POV of the patent office.
So don't say it's solely the Americans that screwed up and we'll do better. The basic economic pressures working on the patent office are exactly the same.
Europe doesn't center around the UK/USian one where courts directly or indirectly create laws by interpreting the constitution
Not really sure what you mean here. From here
"In relation to sources of law, clearly the French constitution is the principal source in France, contrasting sharply with the UK position.
Secondly, all legal systems define laws to some extent through precedent - if the original law is ambiguously worded, then its exact meaning is defined generally through its first usage in court.
The US system has shown itself incapabable of judging what the state of the art in software is. The European legal systems aren't all that good either - take the Berlusconi and Chirac immunity cases for example. So why should anything be better in Europe?
Say, for example, that Microsoft made some clever algorithm that improved their .DOC file format and patented it. This effectively gives them a complete, legally mandated monopoly on word processing for the lifetime of the patent (which is huge compared to the lifetime of software). Nobody can produce an interoperating program without violating the patent or paying a huge licensing fee. How does this help anyone other than Microsoft?
Software is relatively cheap. I would raise an eyebrow at any company which said it has invested millions of dollars in researching a new software "technology". It's not like you have to buy lasers, or break apart pieces of DNA to aid that research.
This is all irrelevant anyway. The real theft in my opinion is the patent system. I find it offensive that I can independently come up with a software idea only to find that somebody has "done it first", and therefore they own all rights to the use of it. This isn't even a rare occurrance - there are an enormous number of trivial and even complex software patents out there which any number of people could have come up with independently, with or without research. I personally have thought up countless algorithms indendently which all turned out to have been already patented (including natural order spreadsheet recalculation, parts of LZW, some specifics of voxel rendering). There are an enormous number of people out there who can and probably have also. It is absolutely fucking ridiculous that my efforts at furthering the art are in fact being constantly restricted by the very process that was setup to encourage it.
Even worse, the original inventor will go out of business because the thiefs don't have the development expenses, so that they can offer the products much more cheaply. And patents are there to prevent such stuff.
The software patent system has always been and still is used solely for the purposes of protecting against other people invoking patent law. This is recursive, and boils down to being pointless. Products which are protected by patents inevitably end up being more expensive to the consumer, simply because the company has been granted a monopoly. Worse, a company granted a patent doesn't even have to sell anything. They can just sit back and collect taxes from anyone crossing over their piece of land grab.
Many people fear that stuff like Amazon's one-click patent and other trivial patents will come out. But I don't think this is a real problem. Such trivial patents are cause by a fucked legal system.
I don't think the triviality of a patent is relevant at all. I don't think I can identify any piece of software which at the very least hundreds of other developers around the world could also have come up with. This does lend a certain amount of uniqueness to the situation with software patents. The legal system problems are not the cause here, they're the symptoms of the wrong model and wrong premise being used to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
sorry - repost. Forgot some tags in my other post making it unreadable. Should have used that "preview" button ;-)
EU is becoming a dictatorship, with the bureaucrats making more and more laws
You will find that while the European Commission, whose members are choosen by the States and not elected, propose many of the EU laws, they have to be approved by the European Parliament to become law. They also have to be approved by the European Council, made up of the ministers of the relevent domain (ie financial ministers, agricultural ministers, trade ministers depending on the law proposal) from the 15 states.
It's a complex system, but not undemocratic: all the actors involved are either directly elected (MEPs), members of elected national governements (The ministers) or choosen by national governements (members of the EU commission). Hardly a dictatorship.
And the citizens don't even have any chance to proclaim their opinions, i.e. there are no EU-wide elections
Excuse me, but I thought EU citizens voted every four years for their MEPs, who go on voting on EU law poposals? Does that not count as an EU-wide election?
Of course, that does not prevent industry lobbyists from pushing hard for the passage of laws in their interest, but sadly this is a practice all too frequent in the world. Without the EU, it would simply take place at a national level in much the same way.
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I live in Switzerland that has a real democracy where the people make the decisions. The politicians do the leg work and attempt to best advise the people. I am firmly convinced that this is the best way to manage a modern economy!
this is not a democracy, this is mob rule. democracy is one person, one vote, to elect a *ruling party* who then govern the country. under a democratic system, they do not need to consult the populace for every decision they need to take.
i do applaud switzerland's stance on several things, including this, however in some circumstances switzerland's system works well because of its stance and circumstances. the problem with making major decisions by referendum is that the populace is largely ignorant, irresponsible and easily swayed. it's putting an enormous amount of power in the hands of the media. if we had such a system over here, i'm sure we'd have david beckham as king of england and we'd have declared war on france.
perhaps that is an extreme example, but my point is that some decisions NEED to be taken from an informed position, and that is what experts are for. if your experts are out of touch, then replace them with better ones. they are there to advise and should be in the best position to do so.
we do not need a system where everything is decided by the masses. internet polls already show how neurotic that can get.
* A softwarepatent would last for 3 years after first public release (including betas) of something implementing it. They will have a maximum of 2 years to release an implementation or the patent will be voided. That is plenty of IT-time to get R&D costs back, and build a strong marketshare.
* They would have to be specific about its field of usage. Someone with a patent for an algorithm used in video encoding should not be able to sue someone using the same algorithm in for example a networking protocol.
* Patents should not be transferable.
* If (A) is granted a patent and sues (B) for infrigement and prior art is found within two years, (A) will have to give ALL money back to (B), including legal costs and lost revenue, and with interest. That would stop big companies applying for 100s of patents per week, for every silly little thing they come up with, without thinking.
* Only the inventor him/herself should be able to be granted the patent. This would include the company they were hired by to invent it. A person should be able to say "Yes, I came up with that!".
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
I can see the problem of Software Patents in the EU from another point of view: if there will be no Software Patents the EU will suffer extreme pression from Bush administration (a.k.a. USA) to introduce such. USA will obiously claim that EU is posing a threat to Intellectual Property, etc. and all such bullshit. /.), then the Bush administration won't be able to come forward with such absurd claims.
On the other hand if the EU introduces SANE software patent rules (such as quoted on
May the Source be with you!
You can defy gravity... for a short time
The issue is not whether a patent is for "software" or not. The same algorithm can be developed either in software or in hardware.
A specific algorithm that represents a truly novel solution to a problem should be patentable, no matter how it is implemented.
What needs to be stopped is the American practice of patenting the feature, rather than a specific solution.
If patents can be issued for software then software should only be sold with the source code provided so that the publisher's competitors can verify that their intellectual "property" has not been pirated. There would no longer be a need for source code secrecy or non-compete agreements since ownership could be easily determined, after years of litigation of course. Even with this "protection", I'd bet that the same large companies who are pushing for software patents would be afraid to allow other patent holders to examine their code.
It's a sad state of affairs to be sure that patents exist at all, but if these people want to fuck themselves like the Americans, 'more' power to the dumb bastards.
I am not trying to troll or be more offensive than I need to be, and what I have said is just my own small opinion. And just to show that I am not completely off ballance, I am not against copyrights, as long as they are not 'eternal'.
Therefore, if you want to have any say in the running of your country - or even, increasingly, in matters that directly affect your personal life - you are going to have to take matters directly into our own hands and eject the pretenders from power. I don't know exactly how this is to be done but there are a few things I do know:
* It makes no difference what political party is running the show because they all start behaving exactly the same way soon after they are elected.
* We need a new system of representation that eliminates the very possibility of our representatives falling prey to the influence of wealthy, powerful special interest groups.
* If we don't get up and accomplish the above very soon indeed it will become completely impossible to do so at all, because of the increasing centralization of power, increased surveillance and the very real and ongoing clampdown on political dissent here in our own so-called "liberal democracy" countries. What do you suppose the recent legislation to restrict and control public access to encryption was about? And the increasing number of urban surveillance cameras? It wasn't to stop drug dealers as they pretended, or street criminals - it's there primarily to allow the incumbent rulers to prevent any organized popular uprising.
* It does no good whatever to sit here and whine about it on slashdot. Get out there and start explaining to your neighbours what is exactly is being done to them and what it is going to mean in the long term. And get yourselves down to Brussels on the day. And dress for trouble because, you know it, the riot police will be there in force in an attempt to make sure anyone who turns up is unable to exercise any meaningful influence on those bastard traitors.
Finally, on the subject of the aforementioned MEPs: If the accepted democratic political process (i.e. letter-writing) is seen not to work because, for instance, they weigh "financial majority" as more important than headcount or strength of feeling, then those MEPs should not be too surprised if their electors come visiting with another political process in mind: "defenestration".
Here are some relevant quotations of the great and the good, for those who are impressed by that sort of thing.
Say, for example, that Microsoft made some clever algorithm that improved their .DOC file format and patented it. This effectively gives them a complete, legally mandated monopoly on word processing for the lifetime of the patent (which is huge compared to the lifetime of software). Nobody can produce an interoperating program without violating the patent or paying a huge licensing fee. How does this help anyone other than Microsoft?
This is already happening, even in Europe. Read the FFII's horror stories about software patents being used in exactly this fashion, several of them owned by Microsoft. Anyone who still thinks software patents are a good idea should read through this entire page.
I work in a research lab in the UK. One time we considered patenting one of our techniques. We took legal advice and were warned that once we did file the patent, there was the chance that other major company or university would file any number of counter-patents. If we advanced the technology in any way, we would risk making a patent violation. Essentially one or more companies would file a handful of patents each based on slightly modified versions of the original patent. Eg. If a patent was filed on a particular shape of brick for driveways (this has happened), competitors would file patents on the same brick for patios or pavements, and/or file patents for slightly modified shape of brick for driveways. The only people who will gain from this (or any new legislation) are the lawyers.
this is not a democracy, this is mob rule. democracy is one person, one vote, to elect a *ruling party* who then govern the country. under a democratic system, they do not need to consult the populace for every decision they need to take.
Going back to the roots of democracy (the Greek), the power was direct. One person, one vote on each issue. This worked in a city state, but of course it was only those with time and interest that would attent, but that was the principle.
The idea of a representative democracy, where the people elect delegates that are empowered to represent the will of the people is of a later origin, and was made to overcome problems of scale (lack of information) and geography (who could vote on stuff going on days of travel away?). It would also prevent such things as fly-by politics (e.g. organizing a group to show up and temporarily shift the balance of power in voting sessions) and constant shifts in politics (the grass is greener on the other side-effect).
I agree that the people should appoint individuals that are to make themselves informed and decide in the best interest of the people. However, the ultimate judgement of who and what should be offloaded to these individuals is also up to the people.
If the people delegate power to experts and say "Please, decide what you feel is best for us", that is democracy. If the experts take this power from the people and say "We know better than you, we will decide for you whether you wish to or not", that is not democracy but a twisted form of aristocracy, by definition a "Government by the best citizens". That Switzerland has chosen to retain much of that power with the people is a sign of democracy, not of the opposite.
And while we're on the subject of government organizations, is the US a democracy or plutocracy? Plutocracy: "A form of government in which the supreme power is lodged in the hands of the wealthy classes; government by the rich;"
Before all go yapping about fair and open elections, remember that this measures the result, not the process. We don't consider countries with one man, one vote (and one party) to be democracies despite having elections. In the same way, if the money control the media and so the general public and their representatives, is it then the rule of the people (def. of democracy) or the rule of the rich?
Btw, the formal constitutional form (republic, monarchy, confederation etc.) doesn't directly related to the form of government, personally I live in a democratic monarchy.
Kjella
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