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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."
Our neighbors across the pond might actually have a good idea for once :) ...
If the WIPO can get a standard software patent system across both sides (US and Euro), preferrably like the Europeans, we might not be reading Slashdot headlines every morning that read "Apple Patents the English Language!", etc. The US Patent system is dated, and needs change, especially when such patents can be made and there is such a high backlog of patents...Time shall tell, but this may be the first step in getting software/IP patents sorted out
My MythTV HowTo
And for the Americans who may ask "It's Europe; who give a flying fuck?", you need to know that the entire European Union is much larger than the United States, both in population and economy. And since Germany is the EU's largest member (and the article also points out efforts in France to block the software patent laws), this this could really heat up the war over software patents.
One man's selflessness is another man's annoyance.
all that companies in the EU will have to do if software patents are denied in the EU will be to set up a small arm of the company in the US. since most software products are sold here as well, they can just do the litigation here in the US. all it would take is for the company violating the patent to have an office or bank account in the US or to sell the offending product in the US...
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
The overall premise of patenting an invention is valid and protects the inventor. However, I agree the current system is highly abused. The flaw in the current system, is the ability to patent 'IDEAS' even if you cant physically create a functioning prototype. For example, right now you can patent the 'IDEA' of a hovercraft car, and 50 years from now when someone actually develops a hovercraft car...they *must* pay royalties to you. ???? this needs to be changed. You should only be able to patent physical process (algorithms, products) and not ideas. -$0.02
Hopefully this will eventually cause change in the American patent system. The current system pratically stifles competition and clogs our court systems, costing millions to tax payers. I mean, come on, why should one click shopping be considered a patentable idea?
Methinks that the EU might be a good place to look into for some fun IT work if they regard the US system like that.
Think on it: Within the EU software ideas will run wild, everyone having access to nuance inventions in their software, whilst over here in the US you won't be allowed to measure the length of a click, run an application within another, nor make an entire window transparent without getting permission from someone else (possibly paying for it).
I wonder how long it will be before free Elvis albums won't be the only product of Europe States-side corporations will try to block.
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Up through college in the US, everything else anywhere else.
Direct away from face when opening.
I think I know what is going to happen:
:)
Eventually, the EU is going to stomp all over US software firms. This will happen after a few years of unrestricted development.
If this pans out well, I'll be looking for citizenship in the EU in the next few years. What's so great about the US nowadays? We've demonstrated that our voting system has failed, that our leadership hates gays, muslims, and does nothing to protect middle america's jobs while all the fatcats get fatter by outsourcing anything and everything they can because they lost their sense of nationalism over a few dollars.
The way I see it, the US has had leadership without any real vision of tomorrow. This has resulted in a world of nations against it. The repair will require a lot more than a democrat in office, too. It will require people actually caring, and that is not going to happen anytime soon. Hell, look how well 9/11 "brought us together". All it brought together were the straight, old white people out in the boonies, and that's only because they all bought the same stickers, t-shirts, and other random 9/11 merchandise at the local gas station. For the rest of us, all we see is a nation filled with hate and sensless, highly reactionary, law making.
Geeks, get your passports ready.. EU or bust!
No... the problem is that over the Bush years there HAS been a vision of the future.
And that vision is that the future should be controlled by big corporations with no mediation from the government or anyone else.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
Actually the US can't force the EC to do anything anymore. As someone pointed out, they have a larger economy (more people, yes... but it's still a larger economy). And frankly america has "lost face" over iraq, and this damages prestige. Prestige is hard to quantify, but if you piss everyone off over one issue... other things get harder.
So the war in iraq isn't *just* sapping millions of dollars a day from the US, you are also losing prestige. Furthermore, your prestige is also going to take a *huge* blow if you pull out of iraq and let it become a hellhole/puppetdemocracy/iran2/whatever. People will say, "look that 'superpower' can't even conquer a tiny country properly - we have nothing to fear".
So there are interesting days ahead, I for one used to believe in america as an ideal - dislike most of the people yes, but the ideal was there. You were my kin, I would have considered dying defending your shores were you under mortal threat (just as the french fought by you at your birth)... but now, I am indifferent, because not only do I dislike most americans now, but I think the american ideal has changed drastically. It is not something worth defending. Your legislators have wiped their asses on the constitution so many times you cannot read the print for the shit. And your populance has stood by and let this happen.
Now the american ideal is the american cautionary tale for how not to let your democracy fail. Some will learn from it, others will not. Life will continue.
America has left a mark on history, and it is still up for grabs as to what that mark exactly is. But right now, it's looking like a stain.
Pro-Something? Heh! We're currently running the biggest peace project ever! We're uniting europe and just now slowly spreading to the east. Two weeks ago we embraced 10 new countries from the former east. It will cost us millons of billions to bring them to western standards and to get an equably spreaded weatlh - by the way a major goal of the EU - this is the only way to ensure permant peace, as unequality will always result in war&terrorism. Thats something the US does not get, 9/11 has shown you can built tons of rockets and warships it does not save you from the massive dangers of disproportionateness .
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Yeah I'm not french either. And although I like to have a dig at them occasionally the fact that I know it is probably americans modding this up (and who created tehe video) just ruins it. We english have been at war with the frogs and dissing them out for much longer and have a right to this humour.
Whereas you americans.... The french helped you fight us off, the french bled and died fighting for your freedom. That makes any jibe by an american toward them (ala the republicans not long ago) a spew of filth.
Disgrace. The french not supporting (i.e. verbal) your quite questionable war equates to treachery? How about remembering the guys who died for you, and died for an ideal.
fuck you, you stinking fucks. this is where anti-americanism stems from. right here, from your stinking ignorance and disrespect.
I think the main reason is: you set a lot of rules, then refuse to follow them yourself.
Examples: nuclear weapons pact, bioweapons pacts, chemical weapons pacts. You use your power position in the UN wrongly. You request following the Geneva treaty for people who have been imprisoned by your enemies, yet you set up concentration camps to Guantanamo and beat people to death in the Iraqi prison you control. Then you cry foul when a citizen is dramatically killed (Berg). And don't even think all of this started with 9/11. No, no.. it had been going on for a longer time. You have to go back to the beginning of the previous century to see all the details and find the reasons.
Whenever something happens to you, you cry foul, although there's a good chance you have already done something similar to some other country.
I think such double standards are the main reason of dislike towards USA. Using the power position to set rules for other, and then ruthlessly exploiting and ignoring them.
And remember, most people hate the country, and what it represents, and especially the government, but have no quarrels with the ordinary citizen.
I am posting this anonymously because it will draw a lot of flak from people who do not read this post with thought and consider this a flamebait. It's not. You can think yourself if the opinions in this post are correct or not and could this be the answer to your question.
Spot on.
I've said this before here. What is going to happen when the huge backlog of trivial and unworthy patents are invalidated en masse? The stupid companies that spent money on them are going to lose them all outright. That would add up to billions of asset capital wiped off in an instant.
These big corporations may feel smug and clever at grabbing patents on swinging sideways and one click whatever, but who will be laughing when they are told they are worth nothing and the money has gone. Not the shareholders that's for sure.
Shareholders should act against companies making weak IP claims because they are just flushing money down the pan for the future.
If you think that Europe is not 'cooperating' with the (ridiculous) American way of thinking about these things wait until you hear what the rest of the world thinks about it. You think the Indians and Chinese are going to repect twisted patents?
Think again.
Amen. An amendment against gay marriage? This is the pinnacle of our president's social policy? Whatever happened to the great uniter?
Whether one is for or against the policy of Iraq, the lack of disclosure from this administration is baffling. Any argument one can use against the Clinton administration (lack of disclosure, too much rhetoric) can be multiplied 10x with this administration.
But more to the point...Europe's economy is proving powerful (and increasingly united) against US policy, and we can either oblige their requests or become victim of their policies. We can force Microsoft to start operating fairly or ignore their practices until their business will be fined into financial hell in Europe and some German company takes over the desktop share (with a Linux/FreeBSD distro).
Just a suggestion: might it not be wise to create a topic and icon for matters pertaining to EU law, in parallel to the Stars and Stripes icon often seen on YRO stories pertaining to US law? I for one am finding the many "earlier Slashdot stories" referenced in the text of every EU software patent story one reads nowadays to be a tedious method of threading.
And before I get modded down by the Europe bashers, let me disclose that I'm an American who finds it edifying to keep up with events across the pond, and have no interest in the "Is Slashdot too Americentric" debate.
Well, talking about buying american products is not something completely accurate.
Do I buy an american products when i buy IBM or Coca cola ? The answer is far from simple when you think about it.
Don't forget that for examples Coca Cola exports very little. They use local factories to produce the soft drink. Same thing for IBM, they have factories all over Europe.
So when you buy an american product, you are not just giving money to the US, but also to those european countries who host those factories.
Nothing is as simple as black and white.
Look at the top 100 "donators" for the period 1998-2004. Just the top 100 have bribed our politicians with $1,156,273,938! You can see why in our "represented" democracy, the average American is not represented. With billions USD going around in bribes, it is hard for even legit politicans to do thier jobs.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
You want to do what? Park an aircraft carrier just off the coast of the country that invented Exocet ?
:-P
My goodness. That'd certainly be a sight worth seeing! Brief, but worth seeing.
Brief? Sorry, no. I'm not one of those knee-jerk "America will kick your ass!" type of Americans but... no. And to the moderators, no it's not insightful. Interesting? Yes.
Your link mentions that it managed to heavily damage a frigate. There's a world of difference between a frigate and an aircraft carrier. From my tour of duty on submarines I can tell you that a frigate of that sort is considered to be a one-torpedo target; one torpedo will literally crack a frigate right in half. Battleships and aircraft carriers nominally need at least 2-3. And that's assuming you even get in range: 65 km? ROFLMAO.
An aircraft carrier is never alone. It is almost always accompanied by at least 2 attack subs and several surface ships ranging 150+ km. around the carrier. No surface ship is getting within even 200 km. of that carrier let alone 65 km. And submarines wouldn't have an easy time of it either. At best it would be a suicide mission (since once they fire, they'll have 2 fast-attacks, a swarm of P-3's, and an ASW cruiser on their ass) and they'd be likely to cause more damage if they simply use their torpedos, or better yet ram it at full speed.
Or, as other posters have pointed out, use nukes. A tomahawk with a tactical nuke and its 1100 km. range would do the trick, assuming the French have them
Don't get caught up with this idea that just because the U.S. is behaving like a bunch of idiots in Iraq, and that guerilla tactics work against a modern army when it's the occupying force among an increasingly hostile populace that that translates to the ocean. Since the break-up of the USSR there is no one (or not even everyone together) who can challenge the U.S. on the seas. Period. That's why the Navy has turned into nothing more than a troop and munitions delivery service: A victim of its own success.
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
"You are really brainwashed by the USA political system. (...) What civil liberties does the USA have that are missing in the EU?"
Free unfettered speech. The kind that will offend my neighbor, my government, anyway.
See, America has this great freedom in theory (First Amendment etc.) but in practice you had McCarthyism, trying to choke anti-war movement regarding Vietnam and the latest anti-terrorist/muslim/arab selfcensorship.
Ever noticed the uproar over a few coffins? Imagine showing their bloody bullet-ridden corpses lying in Iraq. Or how many think the tortured Iraqis "deserved what they got" in the US prisons?
The only place where we're more conservative than the US is when it comes to racism, which I think is your error in judgement, not ours. Think of it as class action libel/slander, which isn't legal neither here nor there.
We may not have that many great quotes, being spread over dozens of constitutions, some that say little about it at all. But I think you will find your freedom of speech is greater than in the US, whether you want to talk about drugs, abortion, religion, nudity, pornography, war or pretty much any other controversial topic.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings