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Torvalds And Cox Write EU Parliament On Patents
replicant_deckard writes "Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox have sent an open letter to the members of the European Parliament. They ask for strict limitations to software patents, argue for open standards and ask the members of the parliament to follow FFII's voting recommendations. Vote on the controversial software patents directive will be on Wednesday and it is expected to be a very close one. Well, do you believe these guys have any impact in Brussels?"
"Subject: Open Letter on Software Patents from Linux developers
Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 13:31:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linus Torvalds
Open Letter to
the Honourable Pat Cox, the President of the European Parliament,
members of the European Parliament:
Dear Mr. Cox,
We have been following with growing concern that Europe has been
extending patentability to computer programs. Now European Parliament
is about to vote on a directive that could put a stop to this
development, or make it worse, depending on how it is amended by the
Parliament.
US experience shows that, unlike traditional patents, software patents
do not encourage innovation and R&D, quite the contrary. In particular
they hurt small and medium-sized enterprises and generally newcomers
in the market. They will just weaken the market and increase spending
on patents and litigation, at the expense of technological innovation
and research.
Especially dangerous are attempts to abuse the patent system by
preventing interoperability as a means of avoiding competition with
technological ability. Standards should never be patentable! Likewise,
patents should never be used as means for preventing publication of
information - the whole idea of patents is to provide time-limited
monopoly in exchange for publication of the invention.
Software patents are also the utmost threat to the development of
Linux and other free software products, as we are forced to see every
day while we work with the Linux development. We want to be able to
provide the world with free high class, high quality, highly
innovative software products that really empower the users and offer
the best and only real chance to narrow the digital divide. Please do
not make this harder to us that it already is! In conclusion, we would
recommend You to vote for such amendments that
* clarify limits of patentability so that computer programs,
algorithms and business methods really cannot be patented as such;
* make sure that patents cannot be abused to avoid technical
competition by preventing interoperability of competing products; and
* ensure that patents cannot be used to prevent publication of
information.
To that end we would suggest following FFII's voting recommendations
on this directive (see www.ffii.org).
Sincerely,
Linus Torvalds Alan Cox"
The whole issue is running so bad (or meanwhile so good) because none of the members of the parliament was aware of the troubel.
... so what? It is canceled in less then 5 years because of the trouble we will get here in europe with EXISTING foreign software patents.
The new directive where brought up and prepared "silently", only noticed by the OS community. For the members of the parliament it was just a standard, "lets see that directive, and if nothing comes up we pass it" business.
Now with all those demonstrations and arguments and prominent people sending letters and making visits, its unlike the directive passes.
And if it does
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The problem with patenting software is because there is so little tangible form that the patent takes.
With software patents, the court doesn't seem clear at all about what constitutes the "form" of the item being patented. It's not restricted to an instruction by instruction implementation. It's not limited to the particular computer language it's submitted in. It's down to the point of being so vague that now even just an abstract idea of something is enough to patent the item. It's to the point that one can patent an idea rather than an implementation.
At least with razor blades and railroad car hitches, it was clear that no one was patenting the "idea" of "trimming hair on the human body" or "connecting railroad cars". The limits of their legal footing are clear. If I saw a way to make a cheaper, better, a meaningfully different item to cut human hair I can see where I might conflict with the Gillette company today. If I don't, then I can apply for protection of my implementation.
In the world of software patents, the original patent has much more power. Everything that claims to do what the original patent does (no matter the implementation) conflicts with the first patent. In addition, if I come up with an intellectually better implementation, and the idea has already been "patented" by an older method, I don't want to try to patent or in any way reveal my methods because they won't get protection. The only way I can keep them is with closed source, trade secret methods.
It would be hard to implement software patents based on implementation ("He wrote his patent in C? We'll write ours in Intel Assembly!") because it would be trivial to create an implementation of the same logic in another form. But the answer is not to allow patenting of ideas which appears to be what software patents have evolved into.
FYI, there is now also a press release on the open letter in the EFFI web pages (I just put it there).
The not-for-profit organization IP Justice has a great summary of the isssue up at www.ipjustice.org and a collection of useful links here.
Take a look. They also oppose the Directive on software patents.
Yeah but why would RMS have a voice in Europe? He's not European so therefore not a constituent and his opinion wouldn't be cared about. Even if he can debate some well thought out points on intellectual property I don't think any EU representatives would care. Alan Cox at least lives in an EU country.
RMS has a serious drawback. He is not European.:-)
Sebastian
No impact in Brussels: that's where the EU executive is. The European Parliment is in Strasbourg.
Geography apart, it may be possible to persuade the parliment, which is a representative democracy, to act sensibly. Trying to influence the executive directly is a lost cause.
No no, this is *Europe*, not the U$A..
Don't forget, there is a public demonstration going on in Strasburg tomorrow in front of the EU Parliament.
The fact that software patents are bad for Linus does not change the fact that software patents are bad for almost everyone. It is almost exclusively a couple of megacorps pushing for them. They aren't doing so becuase it will benefit the public, they are doing so to crush smaller companies and independant programmers. They are doing it to eliminate competition.
Software patents is no different than recipe for baking a chocolate cake or a player piano roll for a some song. All three are nothing more than a written set of instructions. Software is no more patentable than a recipe or music. Written information gets a COPYRIGHT, NOT A PATENT.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.