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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."
I am curious to see how this will play out with big US companies like Microsoft and Apple, specifically with foreign competitors cloning their products.
Will Microsoft be able to prevent Windows clones from being sold in the US by US patents, even though they may be legal in Europe?
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.
On Groklaw, this was reported last Thursday. Not only will Germany vote no, but there is some pretty heavy pressure on France to do the same. In fact, to quote Groklaw, "They call business methods patents on software corporate racketeering and say they don't want to copy US methods"
The entities putting pressure on the French govt. include the head of MandrakeSoft, who has pretty heavy pull over in France. In fact, IIRC, a lot of French govt. agencies use Mandrake Linux.
bash: rtfm: command not found
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?
I still want to get a patent for the human reproductive proccess so that I can essentially control who can and can not reproduce. Gosh knows somebody needs to.
One gets the impression we could make the EU do anything we wanted with reverse psychology.
"OH Bush likes it? Dirty Texans, we shall do the opposite."
The more you know, the less you understand.
It must be a sign of how jaded I've become .. I get no joy out of this announcement because there are probably 500 different things that will happen to reverse it or otherwise change it.
I fully expect the United States to exert effort at the request of $LARGE_COMPANY on Germany to "harmonize" with US law.
Then when/if US intellectual property law comes up for debate, the US will say "we can't have different laws than Europe, we must harmonize!"
Who knows.. I'm not optimistic.
Your patent laws are a train wreck.
Sincerly,
The rest of the world.
I ran a benchmark on my quantum computer, now I can't find it anywhere!
This is an example of how countries in Europe are *not* run by large corporations, but by the people (at least compared to the US).
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.
--
Up through college in the US, everything else anywhere else.
Direct away from face when opening.
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.
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.
We own the patent on train wrecks and your post is infringing on that patent.
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.
Italian Minister for Technological Innovation, that is not entitled to vote ( DOH! ), has strongly recommended his collegues partecipating to vote against as well
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.
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.
If the german government choses to not vote in favor of this, then only because they're sure their vote is not needed in order to have this passed.
Elections for european parliament are coming up. That's why. Don't be fooled for one minute by the german government: they voted against the iraq war even though they probably wanted it - to win elections. They don't critize the US for what happened in iraq recently, but are killing themselves to tell everyone how aweful the beheading of one US citizen was - to get a permanent seat in the UN security council.
Don't trust them. They WANT this law. They fought for it for years. They're just opportunistic, that's all.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
ok, read it as
"Under no circumstances do we want to repeat the mistakes the Americans made with their procedures, in Europe."
Saying the Americans got something wrong is not being anti-American, you will notice that US gun-control laws are virtually unique in the world and that has nothing to do with Iraq.
Don't panic, or at least don't be overly sensitive on an issue like this.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Der Spiegel (article in German) does not agree with you. Maybe they also listened to Heise but it does not look like it.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Kinda strange, but DO YOU READ what you cite?
Quoting:
Last Wednesday Elmar Hucko, head of a government department in the Ministry of Justice, announced at an event in Berlin that the Federal Government would vote against the controversial software patent directive of the Council of Ministers of the European Union
You can defy gravity... for a short time
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
Yes. And quite rightly so. A beheading is not a 'crying foul' matter, nor is it an excuse to score anti-US points on a tech bulletin board (provided to you, of course, by the people you seem to hate so much, the Americans). Total revulsion is surely the only acceptable reaction - two wrongs don't make a right. Accordingly, I have to regard your cheap shot as despicably low.
I'm not American and am drastically against many recent changes in the US, but please - a sense of perspective. I have many American friends, I have even more American friendly acquaintences (online forums, work etc). - it is not an evil nation. It shouts about itself rather too much and its current leadership are, at least in my opinion, somewhere between here and Alpha Centauri in terms of their grasp on reality but you're forgetting the people themselves. They'll correct it eventually, don't worry.
Cheers,
Ian (British)
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)
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
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.
"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