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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.
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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
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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%.
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.
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.
Sorry this is a little bit longer but I have to give my two euro cents to this debate.
Well not being a patent attourney, but being directly affected by it. Yes there are thousands of software patents in europe, most of them illegally and sloppily granted. (Guess the only exception to this is the UK where SWPATS already are legalized on a national level)
Ive read several of them most go like. System and machine implementation - this is the wrapup, then a vague description of the algorithm to cover as many fields as possible.
They were illegally granted (especially in germany) because there was a clear decision years ago, and nobody really currently tries to contest them seriously, at least not outside of the UK. To contest a software patent in the current field could bring down all software patents currently granted by the EPO.
This is also the cause of the pressure of many US multis and the commission for the legalization of the status quo, because 80% of this stuff belongs to IBM Microsoft and Co (with Siemens being the only european corporation having a severe number of SWPATs in the field)...
The problem with the dependency of the US is not really that problematic, the system is currently in the US severely misused and probably will be altered over time once the patent leeches become too dominant, unless they gain too much power, the problem is that nobody wants to have Europe repeating the mistakes of the US (which are court rulings based). But the major parties already signed contracts on the WIPO level years ago, so European politicians feel obligated to follow the bad lead of the US in this case.
An overruling of the WIPO decisicions in Europe basically in the long term would shake the US system and the USPTO to its grounds and basically would in the long run put the patent system on a more sane foundation. The patent in the long term, because Europe and the US are and that is right in my opinion economically dependend on each other. On the other hand a US like patent system all over Europe basically would case a legalized sellout of the entire european software industry (which is 99% small shops anc companies) to patent vulture companies and multinational corporations which mostly are US based and outsourcers to asia.
As for the court thing, this is rather problematic, because if you look at the us, many bogus patents have been tested in court (amazon one click for instance), it all goes down to good laywers and being able to get through it.
Therefore you can see the rise of patent vultures in the US currently which produce nothing but court cases. Those usually have something broad and meaningless on their hand and usually go after the small ones who cannot defend themselves and once knowlegde and funds are improved, go after the big ones.
It is clear that if you apply for a patent law company, that they have a different stance on this issue, because those are the vultures in the system who will or are already feeding on the works of others.