Slashdot Mirror
EU Moves Toward Software Patents
edooper writes "Apparently the patent discussion in Europe has taken a turn for the worse. According to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure: 'This Wednesday, the Irish Presidency managed to secure a qualified majority for a counter-proposal to the software patents directive, with only a few countries - including Belgium and Germany - showing resistance. This proposal discards all limiting amendments from the European Parliament and reinstates the laxist provisions from the Commission, adding direct patentability of data structures and process descriptions as icing on the cake. In a remarkable sign of unity in times of imminent elections, members of the European Parliament from all political groups are condemning this blatant disrespect for democracy in Europe.' Read more: swpat.ffii.org."
No this is not a software patent, you have improved the process of making steel but the process in the way you have implemented it requires the use of a computer to control it. The physical process of making steel is different and patent that. I mean by this is not a software issue, the patent for this should cover the same process being implemented for everything from something like a analogue electromechanical system to someone doing this level of control manually.
This was already voted down for the people we elected. This is unelected people saying it doesn't matter, what the elected said where changing it back.
The Irish Polticians have a cozy setup with MS.
If a first you don't succeed, your a programmer...
For your information - the "disrespect for democracy" comment refers to the fact that the European Parliament voted against this legislation, but it is being brought in anyway. It's not saying that software patents are inherently anti-democratic.
Read how you can help here...
http://swpat.ffii.org/group/todo/index.en.html
Sign a petition here...
http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html?LANG=en
When I signed the number of signatures was 322888, A MILLION ARE NEEDED!!!!
Best Regards,
#322889
NetNewsWire into Yojimbo!
My understanding of what happend is something like:
- The patent office comes out with a wishlist.
- The EU Parliment votes it down and puts some strict limits on software patents.
- The Parliment vote is passed to some bureaucrats to clean up and make into 'proper' laws (it's now out of the Parliament's hands).
- The bureaucrats rip out all of the changes made by parliament, and add a few options that weren't even in there to begin with.
- The president -- currently held by Ireland -- (and literally sponsored by Microsoft) manages to get his EU Council of Ministers to accept this bureaucrat-mangled edit.
Voila! democracy subverted!Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
The theoretical benefit of patents is that companies would publish their formats. But in practice, patents aren't very helpful to someone else implementing the format, especially if the patents were never intended to be licensed. Data format patents would be used primarily to expand monopolies - any company with over 50% market share could benefit from limiting interoperability with competing products. This would be bad enough to offset the potential gains, and much worse than the status quo. At least now, though reverse engineering is difficult, you are allowed to use what you learn.
It is long not over, people.
On 17-18th of May, there will be a real vote by the Council of Ministers. If they vote against software patents - we win.
If Council of Ministers votes for software patents then the bill will return to european Parlament for a re-discussion, which will be postproned to September due to elections.
There we will have the chance to discuss this again, this time with a new European Parlament.
Note: the previose EPclearly stated AGAINST software patents.
He is wrong. It acctually is much more interesting.
Both USPTO and the new directive violate the TRIPS and the Berne convention which both USA and EU signed.
TRIPS article 12. says that software is to be considered a literary work.
Berne convention clearly states that literary works are not patentable.
The problem is that the European Council and the Irish Presidency claim that their proposition doesn't allow software patents, but that is such a pile of bullshit.
It is to me, though. And I'm not alone in this.
The EU is not fundamentally a bad thing. The close cooperation between european states has allowed me, at least, to grow up in a Europe where war is unthinkable for the first time in - well, forever, basically. All these processes you hear about, like that single coin, bring our countries closer together and join them more and more in a unified whole. And that is good. But occasionally we get excesses, such as in this case, and that's something we must fight.
Interesting enough today the old dutch politician Bolkestein returned back to dutch national politics. He has spent several years in brussels and suddenly has aborted his job there. Now why would he return so swiftly all of a sudden?
Bolkestein didn't "abort" his job. He merely announced that he doesn't want a second term as European Commissioner. He will stay on until the end of the current term on November 1st. Hardly a "swift" return.
Denmark was one of the countries that showed some resistance to the
Irish proposal. Now, three weeks ago, most people in the Danish
government and ministries seemed unaware of the negative impacts of
software patents on interoperability. However, an effort by many to
educate the legislators seems to have helped.
That said, as a leaked(?) document
with the current proposed patent directive shows, Denmark
unfortunately has proposed RAND licensing for interoperability-related
patents (see the footnotes on page 10.)
We Danes will need to work on fixing that mistake. Hopefully other
Europeans will try to get their government to change their vote.
According to FFII, only ONE country needs to change its mind to shift
the balance of power in the EU council!
Secondly, the EU directive _actually reduces the degree of software patentability_, because currently after IBM, claims to "programs on a carrier" are allowed, but the directive removes the ability to claim this.
No, article 5.2 of the new Council draft overturns the parliament text, and explicitly permits program claims.
Fifthly, the EU always maintains more stricter examination than the US: business methods per se are _not_ patentable in the EU, and equally, flakey software patents have a harder time getting through. Stop transposing the failures of US into the EU.
Patents directed at improving methods of doing business have previously been disallowed by UK case law. This will be overturned by the directive, which will bring the UK into line with EPO practice, allowing patents for improved business methods which contain a "technical contribution".
The EPO's standards of what constitutes a "technical contribution" can be judged from the Amazon gift-ordering patent, where a patent was granted on the process of:
1. X choosing a gift from Amazon to send to Y
2. Amazon asking Y where to send the gift to
3. Amazon sending the gift
This apparently is a "technical contribution" to the state of the art, and therefore patentable.
Finally, the protests in Brussels are are a laugh: against multimillion dollar turnover businesses using patents and contributing to the wellbeing of the EU economy, you have a bunch of jokers with "terrorism is corporate suicide" and other fairly poor and non-objective slogans doing pantomines. Unless the arguments show facts and figures, and more substantive evidence, this is entirely dismissable.
Actually, as a photo-opportunity it was quite successful. And as a chance to get people concerned about software patents together in a festive environment, it was very successful.
But you may be interested to know that it was followed by a four hour conference, attended by leading MEPs and addressed by leading economists, with representatives from the Commission and the EPO also on the panels.
If you're a subscriber to LWN, there's a report about the gathering by Tom Chance on the latest weekly front page. If you're not a subscriber, the page becomes freely available next Thursday.
(more points to follow)