Slashdot Mirror
Germany to Vote Against Software Patents in the EU
YKW writes "According to Ars Technica, Germany has decided to vote against all changes to current European patent laws. In a statement given to demonstrators in Germany, Federal Department of Justice Minsterial Director Elmar Hucko read the riot act to the EC: 'Under no circumstances do we want American procedures in Europe, Hucko vowed with regard to the US patent process. A patent must be "a fair reward for a bona fide invention and not abused as a strategy to bludgeon competitors.' With the largest EU member against software patents and French IT leaders lobbying their goverment to vote against them too, Europe might be saved from software patents. At least for a while. An older Slashdot article about software patents in Europe is here."
Patents are to protect the creators idea. If I was to mention a completly original idea to someone, then they ran out and come up with a physical copy before me, patented it as their own idea, I could possible be screwed from millions/billions of $$'s. Of course there are alot more problems that may arise from that patent system, to take into account, But I am sure you can come up with some for yourself. Look what happened to Steve Jobs (Microsoft)
EU GDP: 11.50 trillion Pop: 454,900,000
US GDP: 10.40 trillion Pop: 290,343,000
Sure a trillion more is a lot in absolute terms, but it's only 10%.
Anyways in this case it might be more relavant to define a "software GDP," and for now I think the US would be #1 in that dept.
If the EU does resist software patents, it should be interesting to watch: will monetizing every little idea create more value for US companies and keep them in the lead, or will the increased freedom in the EU lead to products that integrate all the best features, leading to EU dominance? And does Microsoft even care, since they can easily buy any company with patents they want? Stay tuned...
looks like you were right...hovercraft is patented: .... sea-land-sky craft capable of navigating on the water, running on the land and flying in the air (that is, climbing vertically, flying horizontally and hovering in the air) usable in a new transportation system 1. The sea-land-sky craft comprises rotating wings rotatable in opposite directions on their centers. Mounting shafts .....
= PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=1&f=G &l=50&d=PTXT&p=1&S1=(hovering+AND+car)&OS=hovering +AND+car&RS=(hovering+AND+car)
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1
10 new countries joined the EU on May 1. I remember hearing on the news back then that this made the EU economy bigger than that of the USA. I think your numbers are pre-expansion.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Simple. there's no patent treaty between the US and the EU.
With copyright, (the Berne convention) once it's written, it's automatically copyrighted in all Berne nations (which is most of them). Registering is still a good idea if you're expecting someone else to claim ownership on the same or very similar work. Licensing said works though, still has to be done via national bodies, which is one reason itunes hasn't come to europe yet.
With patents, you need to register in every country you want patent protection in. The patent rules are not universal, and at least between the EU countries and the US, there's no treaty recognising each others patents. However, I believe it is possible to use patents from other nations to demonstrate prior art, and if you have a patent in one country, it can speed up the prior art examination in another.
As far as software goes, there is a specific exemption in EU patent law that disallows pure software patents. This is what the big companies are lobbying to remove, under the guise of 'tidying up' the law. This is because the EPO has been granting 'computer implemented inventions' on the basis that if it needs hardware to run, or is part of a hardware system, the whole thing can be patented. Of course, these patents are of very questionable legitimacy, so the patent holders have not been sueing for infringement in europe as the end result would probably be they'd lose the patent.
If they can change the law to legitimise their current patents though, and allow more, big US patent holders will be able to shut down large swathes of the EU software development houses (the EU has a huge number of small and medium companies, rather than the few big ones in the US, thus vulnerable to long winded patent ligitation)
Note, the European Patent Office allows you to register your patent with them, and ask for it to be as valid in as many of the EPC signing nations as you want to pay for. The EPC is a patent convention, harmonising patent law between the signing nations, which includes some nations outside the EU itself. Definitely not the US tho!
And my own position; patents on maths, ideas or business methods should remain illegal. We already have a method for protecting specific implementations of inventions in software, it's called copyright. Patents should be the process of protecting specific physical inventions, i.e. a specific mousetrap spring design, not the idea of 'a device that traps mammals'. Imagine if people started patenting plot ideas in novels or TV shows!
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Germany will NOT vote against SWPATs and probably never will. ArsTechica fell for an uninformed Heise news where the reporter was not listening carefully.
/ 2004q2/000059.html
What they said is the same they always said: "We will not vote for it." -- which means they are planning to abstain, not vote against it.
And they are abstaining for the wrong reasons, also.
The babbling about "not wanting US like situation" is entirely insubstantial. Nothing but hot air to distract from the fact that they are indeed working on total patentability.
So do not misunderestimate the German BMJ.
They are are among the hardest hardliners.
The FSFE was more informed -- and issued a statement to ask them to actually walk the path that the news see them walking on:
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release
The numbers are accurate - if you look closer, it's the EU that's 10% larger than the US. However, I agree the parents phrasing made me think at first that he was saying the US was larger.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
I thought that was called "copyright". The whole idea with patents is to monopolize ideas, not specific products which is copyright's domain.
Italian Minister for Technological Innovation, that is not entitled to vote ( DOH! ), has strongly recommended his collegues partecipating to vote against as well
If 3 countries vote against the directive in the EU Council it is dead. Belgium and German will definately vote against it, but a third country is needed.
However, unfortunately there are already 30,000 software patents accepted by the EU patent office.
What is really needed would be an EU directive explicitly tender them invalid.
First of all, as member of the EU, Germany has to comply with EU directives that are passed. Next, WIPO does not only not require software patents, it even forbids them (just like TRIPS).
The excuse used by software patent proponents regarding TRIPs, is article 27:
This text however explicitly uses terms which are defined nowhere else in the treaty (like "invention", "field of technology" and "inventive step"), so that signing members can define these terms themselves in such a way that they fit best in their existing laws.
According to article 52 of the the European Patent Convention, a computer program can never constitute an invention. And in the Parliament proposal of the directive, "field of technology" is defined in such a way that computer programs, maths, business methods etc do cannot belong to one (even if they're executed on a computer).
And on top of that, there's articles 7 TRIPs which is interpreted by the WTO as that the measures as implemented must ...
Most evidence points to the contrary as far as software patents are concerned.
So TRIPs does not require software patents, how does it forbid them?
Article 10 of the TRIPs treaty states:
As opposed to what a first reading would suggest, namely that this simply means that copyright protection must be available for computer programs, this article goes further. The WTO states on its website regarding article 10.1:
Since patent protection is unavailable for literary works, it can't be available for computer programs either according to TRIPs. Proponents of software patents often counter this using their interpretation of "computer program as such", which turns "computer programs with a further technical effect" into "computer-implemented inventions", which in turn would supposedly not be affected by this exclusion.
This interpretation is however invalid due to article 4 of the EU Software Copyright directive from 1991. This article states that a computer program as literary work includes the following (emphasis mine):
The WIPO Copyright Treaty also contains applicable clauses (article 10):
Donate free food here
Actually, we are importing less from the US than we are exporting to the US. So it's quite the opposite.
Sebastian
once called for parking an US aircraft carrier off the coast of france to intimidate them.
It would be funny indeed, esp. when they send their Charles de Gaulle carrier in vicinity of NYC.
Just in case you've forgot, France is a nuclear power too. They'll be the last to be intimidated by such bullying.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
But it is currently not possible to patent trivia things!
The current law is more like an analogy to the copyright of written books. So it is currently NOT possible to simply copy a software programm, and it is NOT possibly to infringe a patented mechanism!
Remember that one of the most important patents - the mpeg layer 3 better known as mp3 - is from Germany, from the Frauenhofer Institute. And they were already able to protect their discovery with an european patent.
So all people who compare europe with the copy-all situation like practiced in some parts of asia simply speaks bullshit!
So if anyone claims that is is possibly to clone Windows in europe SIMPLY LIES!
On the other way it would be practically impossible for to simple single person to code a small piece of software without being frightend to be sued by a large company.
2 days ago there was a conference/meeting against software patens - and guess what: the main speaker was an american programmer: Richard Stallman himself!
best regards, strub
vienna, austria (mozart but NO kangaroos)
Ok, so that's a small country, but still.. there is some political momentum to vote against. If we can convince one mor member state to vote against, the vote will be dismissed.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Donate free food here
The problem with these European software patents is that they are currently in general not enforceable in a court. The reason is that the European Patent Convention forbids software patents. The European Patent Office is an independent institution however, which gets its funding from granting patents, so it creatively reinterpreted that convention. That does not change the law nor the opinion of the courts, however (except for the UK).
You're right however that we have strong copyright laws, and that simply copying other people's code is not allowed (unless they agree, like in case of GPL'd code), not even if it's just a few lines.
Donate free food here
but I too have been suspicious since the Euro was introduced at ~$1,
The Euro was introduced at an exchange rate of around 1 Euro~ 1.17 Dollar which was the value of the ECU (European Currency Unit) on the last day before the Euro introduction (December 31st 1998). The ECU was introduced as a kind of meta currency around 1979.
As you can see on a newswiki in addition to the abstentions of Belgium (5 votes), Luxembourg (2 votes), there are some positive statements from some eg Italian, Slovenian, Spanish etc politicians too, but it is very much in your interest keep the in touch with your government today and on Monday too (Discussion/Voting in the Council scheduled for Tue 18 May; calculate for some time for transmission of your local govt's opinion to Brussels representative!). More help (including pointer to irc) here.
Article 52(1) and (2) of the European Patent Convention:
The mathematical methods and programs for computers parts both rule out patenting of computer algorithms. The European Patent Office may have granted many patents for these things (in violation of the Convention) but that doesn't mean that they would be enforceable in court.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
In that year the French were occupied by Germany.
The U.S. didn't enter into that war until 1941.
Until the end 1943 the official U.S. policy was to appease the Vichy German puppet regime.
It was only Churchill that managed to get the U.S. to reluctantly support the free French.
That's why we hope in Spain our government votes against the Microsoft^WIrish directive, seeing their involvmente with free software in Extremadura and Andalucía. Cross your fingers!
I read an email sent from an MEP to the ILUG, saying that she was dead against it.
link to the email
Exactly!! Are you listening my fellow Americans? That is representative of almost every German I know (me: American living in Germany. But I speak fluent German, so they don't always spot me). I'm sure it's the case with most French. The Germans are anything *but* anti-American. Most of them are still very grateful for things like the Marshall Plan and the Berlin airlift, and they cheered and fawned last time Clinton visited. It's Bush, his government, and its policies, that they hate. That's all.
:-( He's a living breathing recruitment poster for people pissed at the States.
If we pull our heads out of our asses and vote him out (maybe some remedial voter training in Florida?), then I think you'll find a huge change in attitude coming across the Atlantic. The Middle East is different. Bush has probably set us back at least a decade or more there as far as public opinion goes. The terrorist recruiting camps probably rub their hands in glee every time Bush speaks
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
I do believe the point your parent's poster was trying to make was that the US didn't come in till the end of both wars, only when they were attacked - not when it would have been better "for the greater good". Your date of 1917 reinforces his/her post and makes it look even worse.
If the worst you can come up with is nothing more than reinforcing the point, Thank you.
The only entities in USA that have significantly better rights of ownership are corporations -- they are not considered first-class entities (as citizens are) in most european countries. But as to "defend ones rights", I assume you refer to gun ownership. Most europeans would consider these dubious "rights" indeed; not something that add to general well-being, or overall liberties of population. But due to vastly different culture, many Americans do think it is. Just like most europeans think death penalty and extensive health-care are serious "rights" issues, whereas most americans do not (that is, everyone is entitled to complete health-care, independent of their financial status; likewise, that government has no right to kill its citizens that are in its custody).
In the USA most people take for granted that the Police and Courts actually will deal with problems and redress without bribery.
This is just plain wrong: to claim that (western) european countries are all (significantly) more corrupt than USA. Check out latest evaluations by economic organizations (OECD), and you will find out that some european countries (scandinavian, especially) are even less corrupt than USA (which is fairly clean, overall, compared to most world countries), whereas some (southern europe, France), are somewhat more corrupt (somewhat debatable; some cultural things may or may not be considered related to corruption).
EU types have been raised under a system where they delt with a thousand years of entrenched bureaucracy with its systematic and embedded corruption at a level beyond any American Imagination.
Uh, no. Do NOT lump all EU countries along with the ones with most Byzantine and corruption-prone bureaucracies. You are probably thinking worst side of French bureaucratic system. But that's as far from protestantic countries (anglo-saxons, scandinavians), if not more, than from US standards. And even then it's insulting (intellectually and otherwise) to imply there's systematic full-scale corruption in even most problematic of countries.
EU itself, as an organization, is bureaucratic; and has potential to become significantly (more) corrupt. But it has no powers comparable to US federal government, and hopefully never will.
Finally, a minor nitpicking:
Imagine you not being able to quit your job today unless you want to pay your employer.
This would never happen in any european country I know of. True, employee is to give advance notice, just as employer, albeit with much shorter advance (in general, 1 month). However, employer has no means to prevent you from leaving the same day. You will just obviously burn the bridges there, and won't be paid salary for the remaining time you were supposed to be working. That's hardly any different from US standards. Same is not true for employers; depending on country and your employment status, they have to give 1 to 6 months notice for non-temporary workers.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes