Slashdot Mirror
Second Round of EU Patent Fight, Coming Up
An anonymous reader writes "Seems that last fall's victory over EU patent regulations was just round one. The current draft rejects all clarifying amendments made by the European Parliament, allowing direct patentability of computer programs. A net-wide protest is being
organized on April 14."
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
If you would really like to promote change, please take the time to write or call officials. This will almost certainly have a larger impact than any protest restricted to the net.
I mean, obviously these people do not get technology in the way most of us do, otherwise they would not be suggesting such ludicrous laws. As such, take the battle to them on terms they understand.
Isn't it amazing how these guys just keep re-introducing the same (or worse) legislation over and over again without regard to the voiced desire of the citizenry? How many times must we mail letters to our representatives again and again on the same issue? How many times will companies and those affiliated with the WTO continue to introduce the same legislation, maybe hidden as a rider here, maybe out in the open there, each time with the hope that citizens will tire of voicing their opposition over the same issue again and again. Un-fuck'n-believable. Except it's just one of the many ways they game the system.... --M
There is an imporant lesson here. That lesson is that these issues are never finally resolved. Just because objectionable legislation has been defeated once does not mean that it will not be re-introduced. The membership of legislative bodies changes over time. Lobybing continues. Contributions are made. If the financial incentive is great enough, business will never give up.
Eternal vigilance is required. Perhaps the time you are most vulnerable is when you think you have *finally* won.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Oh, it's not as bad as that. Quite a lot of R&D for software happens in Europe - a lot of Microsoft's UI research is done in Cambridge (England, not Mass.) for example, KDE has a European origin, and Linux itself is from Finland. And there is the small matter of CERN inventing HTTP, the web browser and all... So, technically, for all those people who think that the WWW *is* the Internet, it was actually invented in Europe. ;)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Lobbying by judicial entities is evil, be they Microsoft, SCO, IBM, Novel, Mandrake or Red Hat.
The only people who should be able to lobby a parliament are the citizens who voted said parliament
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
Software patents are bad for the economy of the country which allows them.
Imagine this future scenario:
Say, America has software patents and Europe doesn't. Now the American companies can't use the software recipies of their competitors (you lose your patent if you don't enforce it if I remember correctly) and so their software is not as good as it could have been without the laws. The European developers can program without the cost of researching their source code or the cost of buying permission of using patented source and can use the best solutions for their software designs.
European software will, slowly but surely, become better and cheaper than American software and American companies won't be able to sell their software successfully in Europe unless they make a special "High quality European version". Because software is mostly used to streamline business processes. Business in America won't run as smoothly as business in Europe because european business' are using more, and higher quality accounting/production/etc. programs. American economy takes a hit.
Private software user in America won't buy software from US companies because it's inferiour to the software they can (illegally) get from Europe. They pirate either the software made in Europe or the "European version" which they can't legally buy or they import the "illegal in US" Open Source programs. US software sales and services are down because of software patents, American economy takes another hit.
Small companies make up more than 80% of all businesses in any given country. In the US, small software companies will die because of software patents, only a few big ones will survive. Software companies will abuse their positions to increase their profits at the cost of their consumers, American business'. American business' won't be able to buy as much software as they like or will have higher operating costs because of it. The few American companies that sell software won't bring in as much economic activity and taxes as a lot of small software companies + big companies. American economy takes another hit.
Other countries like China which present billions of dollars of potential income for the US won't buy American, they'll buy EU or build their own software. Even less economic activity for the US software industry. American economy takes another hit.
The worst thing the European politicians can do for their countries is to allow software patents in Europe. Europe will lose it's competitive advantage over the US software industry. Even worse, their position will be much weaker than that of the US. Because software patenting has been going on for a while in the US, US companies have the most, and the most important patents on software. US companies will be able to kill off most EU software companies using their patent portfolio's and that would be a bad thing for the EU citizens. I think that an EU politician that votes in favor of software patents is either incompetent or influenced by big US software companies. Their job is to act in the best interest of the EU countries and I think the pro-patent politicians are doing the opposite, vote them off before they can profit! Who's got a list?
Software patents are only good for a few big US software companies, bad for everyone else in their country. And even that's doubtful because they're reducing their own market if my scenario above holds water.
Software patents are bad for the economy of the country which allows them.
- -- Truth addict for life.
There's no point in supporting a company that eventually wants to take away freedom from open source developers.
My next phone will not be a Nokia phone..
for sake of completeness of information, could
someone please post a link to the official position
of the Council of the European Union on this
issue?
This would allow people to see in detail which
parts of the European Parliament's amendments
to the Commission proposal's were rejected and
on what grounds.
Software corporations spend BILLIONS of dollars and employ thousands and thousands of programmers to create patentable IP. If you guys had your way, all of this money would be thrown away and the world of software would be thrown back into the stone ages. Face it, guys, the time for patenting software is NOW
You are missing the entire point of this discussion! Do you think that all this software is written solely to the patentable aspect of it?
Sorry, good software is written to do the job at hand, and if you do it good enough while working for a commercial corp like M$, then the reward will be sales beyond your wildest dreams and a handy raise for you.
But to prevent, by patents, some person from writing, in a clean room environment, never having seen your commercial code, a program that runs as well, or better than yours, is downright immoral. The instruction set for the cpu is essentialy public domain, and must remain so in order to entice coders to code for that particular cpu.
Having the ability to say that a certain sequence of these instructions is patentable, when the instructions themselves are freely available, absolutely boggles the mind.
We have proved prior art for almost any patent that exists only to enrich the corporate coffers of some group of leechs (and that is the right word) who exist not to write more patentable code, which they will never do because they don't know how, but exist only to extort others with their legal dept because they bought this quoted patent.
With that kind of restrictions, no more code can ever be written except in darkened rooms and distributed by clandestin means.
If M$ wants to dominate the world, then let them write better code instead of virus and worm magnets. Free, or commercial, the code should stand on its own merits.
Now go warsh yur mouth out with a bar of Grandma's Lie soap, and no, thats not miss-spelled...
Cheers, Gene
We're fighting the wrong thing. It's not software patents that are bad, it's *bad* patents in general.
Think of this: if I developed an algorithm to encode images, without a patent I would have to keep the implementation secret to be able to make any money. With software patents, I can patent the algorithm, and release source code for the world to use.
While the submarine-enforcement of the MP3 patent is bad, the actual patent is perfectly valid. Why shouldn't Fraunhofer IIS get royalties for the technology they paid for and developed.
If you can patent an improved screw head ("Torx(R) Plus"), why not an algorithm? If you developed a new compression technology or a new encryption technology, why is that any less of an invention than an improved screw head?
What we really need to fight are bad patents. Amazon's "one click" patent is one. Patents are *bad* when they are to broad or don't cover a real invention. But bad patents are a problem with the review system.
This is so fitting with the Slashdot mentality that "software should be free" and that "copyright is bad". Copyright and patent law serves a valuable and important purpose: allowing inventors and (in this case) programmers to decide how their work is distributed. Copyright law has become problematic - we need to go back to the original 14-year copyrights. Patent law has become problematic - we need to stop "inventors" from patenting trivial concepts. But these are problems with the system, not with the concepts of copyright and patent law.
I end with this:
If you invented a new concept in software, such as a better compression algorithm or a better voice recognition algorithm or a more efficent protocol to transmit data, why is your invention any less of an invention than if you had invented a better screw head?
If you inveted a new compression system, which is better for the community: a patent which forces disclosure of the algorithm and eventually expires, or a trade secret which requires that the algorithm be kept secret and closed and may never expire?
So software patents are back on the agenda, and influential politicians are pushing for them. It makes me think there MUST be something good to them, and it's just my severe tiredness that makes me fail to see it.
The strongest argument pro-patent people have used that I can recall right now is that they provide (financial) rewards for innovation. So, supoosedly, the idea is that we want innovation, so we want patents. I think this kind of thinking is kind of narrow; there are other ways to innovate. If we so badly want innovation, we can pool some funds and pay for R&D, right? We can pay researchers to cooperate, rather than compete, and invent new things rather than other ways to do the same thing (which would have to be found because the competition patented their ways).
So, there are alternatives to patents, and I think it's worth investigating them. Patents are always unfair in a sense, in that the first one who is assigned the patent blocks out all the rest, even though they may have worked just as hard to come up with the invention. In current systems, obtaining patents is costly, which favors already wealthy corporations over smaller ones, which can lead to consolidation of the market in the hands of the big guys and harm the consumer - which I think is a Bad Thing.
Practical limitations make it very hard to encertian that a technology is not (or rather, cannot be seen as) infringing on some patent, which puts even those who try to play nice at risk of being sued - which is harmful no matter if they win, lose or settle the suit.
Software patents in particular seem to have had the effect of stifling rather than boosting innovation.
All in all, I am tempted to conclude htat patents in general and software patents in particular do more harm than good. Obviously, some politicians and some corporations hope to gain from them, though.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
But to prevent, by patents, some person from writing, in a clean room environment, never having seen your commercial code, a program that runs as well, or better than yours, is downright immoral.
So is it also "downright immoral" to prevent, by patents, some person from designing, in a clean room environment, never having seen your commercial mousetrap, a mousetrap that traps as well as, or better than, yours?
Not trolling, just honestly wondering . . .
There's some truth in that, but your argument assumes that all parties have equal access to the patent system. Companies backed by millions of dollars and whos sole business is to aquire and exploit patents will always game the system to unfair advantage over more innovative individuals and small companies regardless of whether the patent has real merit or not.
Thats where patent law falls down in its idealism.
Solutions: (?) All patent applications must be:
1) Free
2) Trivial to file
3) Must be commercialy exploited by the holder or they will lose it to the public domain.
4) Non transferable/saleable as assets
I believe the master of relativity once worked in the patent office himself and was sceptical of Mans arrogant claim to 'own' knowledge.
``I've noticed this too... Isn't it about time for direct democracy?''
I don't think that's a good idea either. I for one wouldn't trust the majority to have the knowledge or even dedication to take the right decissions in many of the specialized issues that come up in politics. It's very easy to influence public opinion, as has been shown at various occasions in history, and hardly always for the better.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Yeah, right.
The vast majority of innovation in the computer business takes place in small companies. Small software companies out-invent and out-innovate big companies every day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
In fact, most fields are like this; patents only really pay their way where significant up-front investment is required to bring an invention to market, such as in the pharmaceutical business, where the science is not understood well enough to be predictable, and the regulatory framework for new products is punishingly expensive. Some other heavily industrialised fields with big start-up costs can also benefit.
By contrast, software has a cost of invention dominated by staff salaries rather than plant or infrastructure, and has an incremental cost of manufacture of zero, which unprecented in economic history. These features, plus a historically lax regulatory framework for software, means it's pretty much the opposite of everything that makes the economic argument for patents justifiable.
Your big hero software companies see patents as a weapon to use in negotiations with the other corporate bruisers, and as a means to impede entry to markets they want to defend, not as a means to bring new things to consumers.
If you don't think that's true, please find evidence of a single significant software invention that would not have happened without patents to make it economically viable.
Rubbish. Having to deal with patents for software is where you'd be throwing your money away, and I'd much rather spend it on development than on due diligence and legal insurance.
Pretty much the entire history of the software business is patent-free, and yet we got from the so-called "stone ages" to here pretty quickly, didn't we? This is the QED that patents are not required to promote progress in the software business, because massive progress happened without them, and no-one with any economic education can make a plausible case that we'd have got to where we are quicker, better or cheaper with them. Serious studies by actual economists (not accountants or executives) show that the pace of innovation has reduced, and costs to bring products to market have risen, since people have been able to get patents on software.
Only if you're a patent attorney, a narrow-minded corporate executive, or otherwise sadly misinformed. For everyone else, they're an obvious and unnecessary burden on progress, which is precisely the opposite of what they're supposed to be.
For the record, I've been inventing software related things for decades, make my living at it, and hold software-related patents. And I'd love to see them all torn up.
The numbers correspond to amendments. In general you can say, the more green boxes a MEP has, the better.