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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."
In the USA, the people don't directly elect the president. We might say we do, we might think we do, but really we don't.
What Americans actually vote for is "electors" who have been selected by campaign organizations to be the people who will represent the people who are running for president. Each state holds its own election to determine which slate of electors they will send to the "Electoral College"... whomever gets a majority of the votes for president there wins. (Should three candidates get electoral votes, and nobody gets a majority, the election is kicked to a special session of the House of Representatives where each state gets exactly one vote.)
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 that'd end up deciding the outcome, deciding if the votes would stand as originally cast, or if the "expected" result should be used instead effectively making the Electoral College meeting the formality we all want it to be.
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.
I'm just saying, it's not like this is a situation that could never happen in the USA...
The text of the submission was somewhat misleading, for a second I thought it read the Dutch wished to support patents - but they really wish to vote no. I just thought someone should make that perfectly clear.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...gave a flaming speech (german, sorry) for software patents and the protection of intellectual property as the new resources of the 21st century in Munich, 2 days ago. Note the european parliament voted AGAINST the draft, now the senate is clandestinely pushing for it's implementation. We're talking, demonstrating, doing everything in our possibilities here as german software developers, but the "social democratic" guys in power do not care, and do not have a fucking clue what they're talking about. Destroying innovation to appease the big companies :(
If you're in europe, come on join at the FFII and help in the fight, please. It might be our last chance.
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.
Hey, sounds like something else I've heard of.
At least here in Canuckistan, the business interests only have to buy off the Prime Minister, and the rest of the party is forced to follow. Simpler and more efficient kakistocracy!
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Here in the Netherlands, the fact that that asshole minister of us voted FOR software patents has been a nice little riot in the dutch techie world. People were encouraged to write said minister, write to his party, write to the head of the party, parliament, etc. I think that all of this caused sufficient public backlash that forced our goverment to make that bastard swallow his words and do The Right Thing(tm).
Hate me!
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.
You do realise that the problem in this situation was the coucil, that is the gouvernements of the member countries? Not "Eurocrats in Brussels".
What right to collect royalties? Their entire problem is that so far they don't have that right!
1. Most software patents I've seen patent ideas or concepts rather than implementations. Let me try to make that a little clear. Like, the AC3 algorithm is patented, which is fine. You can make another format which does the same. A software patent would patent the concept of "multiplexing several audiostreams into one datastream" or somesuch. There's no "innovating" around that. Try looking up how many trivial concepts of a webshop is patented. You'll exceed a dozen patents already on the front page, if not more.
2. Ideas are often trivial to come up with, and should more often than not be dismissed for being obvious. Since that is a sleeping criteria, huge amounts of trivial ideas will be granted a software patent. It is also requires no real-world connection at all. You could pick up "Science Illustrated", and patent everything they claim is "likely to appear in the next 20 years".
3. An expired software patent is still protected by copyright. Since the software itself and the patent description is essentially the same sequence of commands, you can't use it anyway. While whereas with a real patent, I could use your exact blueprints (as appearing in the patent) to build my own device.
Real patents describe a path from state A to B. Software patents describe the process of going from A to B. Getting a patent should mean that you've actually done some work and found a way from A to B, not merely assumed "some way to go from A to B will be invented". That is not innovation. That is profiting from someone else's innovation, and is directly opposed to the purpose for which patents were created.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You're exactly right-- the advocate wants to use a particular technique to build something. Now, if you view this sort of activity as nothing more than a commercial process in which the open source developer is trying to get somethng for nothing , with no greater significance, then it's perfectly reasonable to follow your line of reasoning. Problem is, in the aggregate, building things is how innovation happens. Cut it off and innovation strangles.
The "gray area" for policy makers is not whether software inventions should be considered patentable because of their similarilty/dissimilarity to physical devices. The real argument is whether software patents will advance the process of innovation (and otherwise benefit society), or slow down innovation and harm society. Opponents of software patents have made an excellent case that in this particular situation, at this time, software patents will severely restrict innovation in an important industry.
Now a great deal of their justification comes from the observation that software patents being allowed in places like the US are overly broad and carelessly considered. But more importantly, it comes from a deep understanding of the nature of invention and the state of the art in software. Whether you're considering hardware or software, inventing new things has almost always required the use of components invented by other people. Imagine if the independent inventors of last century had been denied access to the capacitor, battery or transistor-- because those things were patented and only large corporations with legal departments and plenty of capital could afford to license them. So many of the things we take for granted today would never have been invented.
Why are software patents different from these physical devices? For one thing, where many patented devices can be constructed and sold in bulk for a reasonable per-unit price, it's difficult to purchase an algorithm or an application at your neighborhood Fry's. And since corporations generally can't profit through bulk manufacture/licensing of software components, they profit through high licensing fees unmanageable to the small inventor. Or they profit by using their patent portfolios as defensive or offensive weapons against potential competitors. Open source development, arguably one of the most promising engines of 21st century software innovation and cost reduction, is in some cases an innocent victim of this, in others, a direct target.
But here's the important issue: while physical device patents may have encouraged invention and innovation throughout the last century, there is no reason to assume this will be the case for software patents. While an efficient model may develop to smooth over the economic inefficiencies of a software patent system, none has yet, and the interim costs will be high. So the near-to-medium-term result of software patents is not a net increase in innovation or a financial windfall to society, it's exactly the opposite. And for this, some argue that society should subsidize the creation of a software patent industry. I don't think it's worth it, and I think this is the aspect of the debate we should be focusing on.
Fortunately it seems a few European nations have noticed the current US system is only good for patent lawyers and draining resources to fight off vulture corps. Even Microsoft's recent BS patents being awarded had to have helped wake up the EC to the insanity which is destroying the American ability to innovate and compete.
Maybe a few of them also noticed that such legislation was only a first step. Next would have been a "unified" patent database "offered" by the US which would have started with a portfolio of bogus patents owned by US interests. Essentially signing over a world-wide "software tax" to US corporate interests.
Not only would the US businesses continue to be gutted by IP vultures, the EC businesses would have been caught up in the same nightmare. The US is quite welcome to continue destroying the American economy, but thank God the rest of the world has finally noticed the insanity of their patent "system" as a viable model.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.