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EU Ministers Went Off-Brief In Patent Vote
MartinB writes "Several EU ministers reportedly went against the wishes of their nations in voting for the proposed EU Software Patent legislation in May. Among those misleading the council of ministers were representatives from Holland, Poland and Germany. The Dutch parliament is going as far as asking to change its vote, which was originally in favour of making software patentable."
Of course, we in the USA could as a country hold a constitutional convention for purposes of abolishing the current government and setting up a new one, as a constitutional right.
I wonder how the EU is set up with regards to this?
A vote in the European Parliament not long before had REJECTED US style software patents, much to support of the vast majority of their constituents.
The ONLY people interested in promoting Software Patents here are a few (not all) of the large corporations (Microsoft, Nokia) and, of course, the IP lawyers, and some relatively influential (unfortunately) politicians and civil servants who have been duped. The VAST majority of others who are aware of this are dead against it. To make the message clear, excuse the shouting...
WE DO NOT WANT SOFTWARE PATENETS HERE.
Software patents are not in force here yet, hopefully they will not be but there is an enormous fight on our hands to prevent it.
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
how in the world a law gets passed that no one wants?! The chance that some day there is a patent on software is very high, even though 99% of people that understand what software is are against it.
Why must we always hurt the ones we love?!
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I'm not trolling. But I think the software patent issue is more complicated than you think.
... though I would prefer a middle view that recognizes software as a distinct hybrid of an "idea" and a "device". Such a legal status would also resolve the question of "is code speech?" with the answer "yes and no". (Can you tell I'm Canadian?).
Let me start by saying that I think submarine patents are a gross abuse of the system and should be abolished. And I agree that, in general, intellectual property law needs to be reformed. Both these ideas are beyond the scope of this post.
Now, you ask the average open source advocate what s/he thinks about software patents, and s/he will be opposed to them, on the grounds that they stifle innovation. I can buy that to some extent. However, if you ask the same advocate why s/he wants a particular patent invalidated, it's usually to copy a patented algorithm and incorporate it into an open source product. That doesn't seem like innovation to me. It's true that open source would let others learn about the algorithm and improve on it, but there's nothing preventing you from studying a patent -- in fact that's the whole point of the patent process. If you're keen enough, you can take the ideas in the patent and implement a free work-alike (like png, gzip, or the free equivalent to rsa), and innovate away.
Looking deeper, I don't see that it's consistent to be in favor of patents but opposed to software patents. This is because software blurs the line between a device and a description. For example, consider an integrated circuit. This is clearly a device, and hence patentable, right? But it can be described using a language, such as VHDL. In fact the VHDL can be used with a programmable chip to instantly implement a work-alike to the device. Hence, if the chip is patentable, the VHDL should be patentable too.
It's as though you had a description of a tool (a drill, say), which could be instantly implemented on some universal machine. The description is only trivially different from the tool. (This may sound ridiculous, but with 3-d printers and related technology, the day may not be far off when we see such a thing.)
To take a Touretzkian view, this means that either all patents are valid (including software), or none are
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Part of the reason we didn't need income taxes was the sale of goverment land during the 1800s. Once we stopped selling off "The west" income in other forms was needed.
For better or worse we also have stopped our isolationism and need to support a standing military capable of fighting wars overseas to preserve our interests. This doesn't just affect oil in the middle east, but it gives the US leverage to prevent things like China invading Taiwan (which could devastate the tech industry for several years)
Income taxes are more useful than consumption taxes (which preceded income taxes) to tax the rich. The percentage of income spent on goods is typically inversely proportional to the income of an individual. For example poor people spend almost all their money (people living month-to-month) on goods and necessities; Rich people can buy goods and necessities, and still have money left over to save. A consumption tax would be regressive, since poor people would be taxed on nearly 100% of their income, while rich people 70-80%.
> This could be a scandal that might rock the
> comparatively-new EU system for a loop. Ministers > were being trusted to represent the view of the
> government that sent them...
I think the people there more or less gave up having their voices heard when they joined the EU/Borg collective. They know well that their EU reps serve the EU, the bureaucracies, their careers and THEN...if it happens not to interfere too much, the people.
In THAT order.
And if we go back on a popular topic, the euro governments have often not listened to their people when it came time to British-American invasions... Spain's poll topped at 92% against the Iraq farce recently but in the past decade many countries had strong feelings against carrying state-sponsored terrorist activities and yet government didnt head their calls.
And now your gonna tell us that this bureaucratic system is in peril because of patent laws?
Only from a geeks mouth could this come out.
> but it seems as if business interests have found >that these individuals are a weak link that can >easily be "bought off" and convinced to act on
> their own.
I think the correct answer here is "Well, DUH!!".
zeke
Not all states do an all or nothing vote with their electors. in fact, iirc, the electors aren't even truly obligated to follow the popular vote in their state at all. of course, they almost always do.
there is at least one state (new hampshire, i believe) where one elector votes for the candidate who recieves the popular vote in each congressional district, and the remaining two electors vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in the state as a whole. thus it is not uncommon for new hampshire to split its electoral votes 3 to one candidate and 1 to the other. imo, more states should use this system, however, to be honest, the number of times that a candidate has won the popular vote and lost the elctoral vote is so small to be almost negligible. the current presidency is, of course, the exception, not the rule...
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
No it isn't because it was just a preliminary voting on the draft of the directive. The text first has to be translated into all official languages of the EU before there can be a final vote but normally that just confirms what the preliminary voting said.
BTW even if the decision of the first voting is confirmed it's not law because first there has to be a second reading in parliament if that votes against patents (again) the council has to vote for unanimously in a second voting or find a compromise with parliament (look for the /. news about the Dutch thingy in that thread was a good explanation of the whole procedure)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
They used a submarine patent while pushing their technology, it wasn't honest business. Hardly a shining example.
This could work fine for compression algorithms and similar software. However, if you came up with e.g. a method for solving NP-complete problems in polynomic time, it would still be good enough to give an exponential time B-method (which would still be slow enough to effectively elliminate any competition and you would have a monopoly).
:-) ).
I doubt software patents is a good idea at all. In general the patent system as a whole needs to be changed if it is not to be more harmful than good in the future. First, we might need to differentiate the time for which a patent is valid. Perhaps by adding a rule that the patent only is valid until your earnings from the patent amount to e.g two (or ten, or a hundred) times the development costs (possibliy dependent on what kind of invention the patent is for).
Second, it should not be permitted to use patents to prevent new products or much less expensive products on the market. Thus, it should only be permitted to enforce a patent against a direct competitior. If you own a patent but you are neither selling a product based on that patent nor licensing the patent to some other business that sells such a product, then the patent should expire much more quickly.
Also, if some other business can offer a similar competing product at less than e.g. half your prise (or the price of the product from the most inexpensive direct competitor that is licenced by you), you should not be permitted to charge
them licensing fees (thus forcing you to lower the price for your product until you can charge them for theirs). It should not be permitted to use patents to prevent products from getting out on the market at resonable prices.
Also, it should never be permitted to charge licensing fees that are high enough to force a competitor out of business. I.e. licensing fees should not be permitted to be higher than to force your competitor into having an at most slightly lower price than your product have (or the most inexpensive competing product licensed by you).
If there is only one product on the market that make use of a patent, you should not be permitted to charge patenting fees for it (you would have to make sure there is a competing product). If there are more than two competing products, it should be permitted to auction the licenses out (still if any of them can sell the product for half the price of the other, they do not need to pay any fee.
Perhaps not all of these ideas would work given more consideration. The target I am aiming for should however be clear: Resonable patents that does not prevent competition while still enabling the inventors to make profit from their inventions.
RMS and his GNU GPL can perhaps teach us a lesson here. We might not have to wait until we get the desired legislation for this in place (which might never happen). If something like the ideas above (we certainly would need to refine them a bit first) woud be desirable, shouldn't it be possible to create a "GNU GPL" kind of patent licensing agreement too?
There are already agreements of the "you may use my patents if I may use yours" kind in the industry today. Why not a licensing agreement of the kind "you may use our patents if you abide by these conditions and you license your all your patent to us and anyone else who follow these rules for their patents". Then, all we would need to do is to collect a big enough patent portfolio (that hopefully will grow as others join us in order to use our patents).
Yes, this would require us to get some valuble enough patents to start with (which might not be easy, I certainly have none). But, just as the GNU GPL is currently slowly but steadily forcing proprietary software out, in 30 or 40 years the same could be true for patents if we started today.
(if you like these ideas, mod me up
The point is that these electors were selected by the campaign of the candidate they're supposed to vote for, and are contractually and legally bound to do so... but, uh, what if they don't? That's just plain uncharted Consitutional territory. The Supreme Court would most likely have to issue a ruling
This is incorrect.
First, this is not uncharted territory. It has happened several times in the past that electors didn't vote the way they were expected to, though I don't believe electoral infidelity has ever changed an election. Second, the Supreme Court (I'm assuming you mean the US Supreme Court) wouldn't get involved at all, because the selection and voting of the electors is defined by each state. Whether or not the electors have a legal obligation to vote a particular way depends on state law, and the penalties for violating that obligation, if any, are also defined by state law. Electors from some states are free to vote their conscience, whatever the outcome of the popular election, and others will go to prison if they don't vote "correctly".
It's also worth noting that the state legislature can direct the electors to vote a particular way, regardless of the popular vote, since it's ordinary state law that says the electors should follow the popular vote. We almost saw this happen in 2000, because the Florida state legislature was annoyed enough at the actions of the Florida Supreme Court that they were getting ready to override the whole popular election process and direct the electors to vote for Bush. Of course, as it turned out, the USSC determined that the FSC had overstepped its bounds, and the election was resolved that way. Had the Republican-dominated Florida legislature decided to put Bush in office directly, however, it would have been perfectly legal.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I don't think it's a good idea to compare both institutions. You compare a intergovernmental institution with a nation. When you want to compare US with EU member states, you have to check whether Negroponte represents the opinion of the majority of the US citizens when he casts his votes in the UN Security Council.
Nevertheless, you are right that this might rock the system, just as much as the EU world was rocked when the fraud by the French commissioner Edith Cresson was brought out. Perhaps nice to know, although off topic, is that the dutch EU civil servant who brought this to the light is now a member of the European Parliament.
There have been a lot of complaints by Dutch MPs that they are unable to control the ministers in the Council of Ministers. But they did not act. So finally, they know now they can control the Dutch vote over there. About time.
If you follow the logs of the meeting (yes you can find them over the net) and various other sources. Holland: The parliament basically was basically betrayed with false facts in a document. The minister worked with lies which he later blamed on a mistake in the text processor. During the meeting basically poland was tricked into a yes which still is questionably legal (there are rumours that there was a irregularity in the voting process concerning poland) and denmark as far as I can remember was quite agnostic and also tricked into the whole thing without really caring (they simply wanted the meeting to end). Germany is a whole different issue, two days before the meeting the german government said they are going to vote no, to calm the critis, and they votetd yes. There are several main protagonists. First of all Boelkstein of the EU commission who is clearly on the side of the BSA in this, probably indirectly on their pairoll. Then responsible local minister Renate Zypris, who either does not care or thatever, she basically even though being confronted by critics several times (last time in an open discussion on Heise, which you can read here , never really argues about the problems, but comes with empty phrases and does not answer the concerns of the critics. She basically only answers with half lies or empty phrases. Thus her direction is clear, software patents no matter how big the impact for the european industry is (which probably will be devastating). And last but not least, the german cancellor himself, Gerhard Schröder, who last week in a so called open discussion literally kissed the asses of the Siemens managers in this issue. Siemens of course, a company with mass layoffs from Germany to asia, presses for this issue and the german government follows like a puppy without a brain. Clear corruption or blackmail, if you ask me. Unfortunately the german public media ZDF also added something to this chorus and basically made a report which put the patent critics into the same light as software pirates, which is totally wrong. However all is not bad in germany, there a lots of critics at the second level and the parliament, the german greens also feel quite unhappy about the whole issue, and also the german FDP. However the important persons of both big german parties basically are in the same bed with the 2 german multinational software companies.
Having recently decided to look outside the IT industry due to a questionable future and unsatisfying opportunities for a young graduate here in London, I decided to look into the one profession that seemed to have a glittering future. The European Patent Attorney (specifically interested in the software side of things given my background). After applying to a number of London based firms, I had a series of interviews. I made the point of discussing European software Patents in each interview, at first using my understanding I had gained from Slashdot. However, in each case, I was fatally shot down as it transpired that the general understanding of Patent law here at Slashdot is horribly inaccurate and incomplete. Basically, having discussed it at the length with the partners, the situation as I understand it is as follows: 1. While software patents aren't strictly legal in Europe, they are easily implemented anyway. This is done using a number of techniques including wrapping them up in 'technical processes' which are perfectly legal. There are currently a huge number of software patents that exist in Europe that have been implemented this way. 2. Of the ones that can't be wrapped up in this method, a large number of patents are set-up and currently pending the highly expected change in the law. 3. Everyone I spoke to was perfectly confident that software patents would eventually be implemented in line with the US. The European economy would be dependant on this in the long term. Also, the law change would not be retrospective so all previously used inventions (but not the ones currently pending) will be public domain. 4. They were all very aware of the 'open source crowd' and sympathised with their cause. They explained that if the law was changed, it would only prevent the open source crowd from copying other software and would not limit them from innovating. However, when I mentioned the Microsoft 'double click' patent, they all laughed out loud and warned me these things were usually a thousand times more complicated and subtle than I had been led to believe. If, in the case of this Microsoft patent, it really was ridiculous, then it would instantly be shot down in court as soon as it was contested. Anyway, IANAPA (yet!) but that is what I have learnt from my experiences. Feel free to correct me if I have missed points.
That's exactly the situation the EU seems to have worked themselves into here. They've ended up with "unfaithful" representatives who didn't do as they were expected to, and the EU hasn't exactly pondered what to do in such a situation yet.
Not quite. The EU Council, which took this decision, is not intended to represent the people. It represents the governments of the respective member states'. The governments, in turn, are supposed to represent the people.
(The EU parliament is the direct representative of the people.).
So it's more of a going-back-on-a-campaign-promise kind of betrayal than the analogy you made to the Electoral College.
You compare a intergovernmental institution with a nation.
At first, the United States *was* an intergovernmental institution. There's a reason they're called "states", and it's no coincidence that 'state' is a synonym for "national government". At first, it really was a union of independant states.
What makes things signifigantly different is the culture. Unlike the EU, The new USA was made of member states that all spoke the same language. Unlike the EU, they all came from the same original parent culture. And unlike the EU, the states in question had no previous history of independant sovereignty to protect, and so were willing to 'give up' a little more. (They were moving from being colonies of an empire to being states in an alliance, without any intervening period of independant, non-allied rule.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
So far, I have not heard any report in the normal media about this political conflict which has been ongoing for some months now. Appearantly, the normal media does not consider it as news, probably because they do not understand the issue. Which is a very sad things.
Is still a satire and reflects on real life.
So close a refelection that Margaret Thatcher once called it "[a] closely observed portrayal of what goes on in the corridors of power".
I often say that Yes Minister would be even more hilarious if I didn't know it was actually the sort of thing that goes on.
The French demonstrated a rather effective solution to such a situation back in 1788 or so
Well I'm not sure you've chosen a very apt example there, because one of the first things the French revolutionary National Assembly did, in early 1791, was to pass a patent law stating that "it would be to attack the rights of man in their essence not to regard an industrial discovery as the property of its author".
-wb-