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Lawsuit Filed Against Software Copyright
mdielmann writes "CNet has a story about a lawsuit asking for copyright protection to be removed from software, while leaving patent protection in place. Intellectual-property consultant Greg Aharonian hopes to convince the court that software makers can protect their products adequately through patents, which provide more comprehensive protection but are difficult to obtain and expire in a shorter period of time. It looks like this would hamstring licenses such as the GPL, which are often based on copyright privileges, while leaving OSS vulnerable to patent infringement. Apparently, he's been working on this for the last three years."
Excuse me? Is it the author or the editor who's claiming that patents are difficult to obtain? Haven't we been seeing patents being awarded left and right for the most mundane industry processes? Difficult to obtain, indeed.
The Supreme Court of the United States indicated in its Eldred v. Ashcroft opinion that the Court isn't in the mood to to legislate from the bench, that it's Congress's job to sort out the scope of copyright law so long as there's a semblance of a right of fair use preserved to the people.
I wouldn't expect Eldren v. Ashcroft to even play into this at all, because it doesn't involv eany of the issues raised therein. The courts don't have the power to decide what methods are or should be used to protect "intellectual property." That's clearly up to congress, and I would expect any reasonable judge to toss this on that alone.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
However, no one is associating copyright laws with human rights.
Tell that to Dr. Lessig.
Dracionian EULAs are based in contract law, not in copyright.
Most EULAs restrict beyond what copyright calls for. This is only enforceable - if at all - on the merits of the EULA as a binding contract.
How can you claim that patents are not harder to get than copyright? Your post, mine too, are both protected by copyright. Neither of us did ANYTHING to accomplish that. TO get a patent you have to hire a patent lawyer to help write it, pay the filing fee, and it frequently takes multiple submissions to get accepted (if it gets accepted). Then about 3 years later, poof you have a patent!
Don't exaggerate by claiming patents are as easy to get as copyright. It's entirely false.
Now as someone who works in the game industry, how exactly would patents protect games? If anything, strong patent enforcement would shut down the game industry given the patents owned by the graphics companies, not help it.
Is that they have to be published, compulsory licencing and challenge in court is an option and educational use is free. Instead of an innovation being locked up inside a company, other people can expand on it and even sell their work back to the original inventor. This could discourage one-click style patents because then the filer can not then argue in court that single-tap on a touch screen is not separately patentable.
Sure big companies (and small "IP" companies) will abuse patents, but they do that already, along with abusing copyrights and contracts (shrink-wrap). The only way for common people to live in a sane world is to constantly push back.
If you guys bothered to look at this guys website, which is named http://www.bustpatents.com/, you'd see that he is really against software patents.
I think what he is trying to do here, is perform a publicity stunt to show that patent laws (in its current messed-up form) actually could COVER copyright laws since copyright laws says others can't distribute your (non-free) software, while patent law says they can't even distribute software that DOES THE SAME THING as your (patented) software.
My summary: A total removal of copyright protection is not asked (and will NEVER be granted by the courts; that's something for Congres.) Best case is that the courts declare some license conditions and DMCA clauses "non-binding", they put bounds on the rights software owners claim to have. (All the data on your computer is ours...) Most likely result: effectively nothing changes.
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
You were close. It's "ex post facto," and it deals with laws making things criminal after the fact, something expressly forbidden in the Constitution. For example, if someone violated a copyright while it was still covered purely under civil laws, and then later a law came into effect making that copyright infringement a criminal violation, as long as the person were not continuing to commit the violation after the act becomes criminal, he can only be pursued under the original civil law, and cannot be prosecuted criminally.
When laws are blocked by the courts from being enforced, this has the effect of preventing further actions to uphold them, but does not necessarily relieve those who have been convicted of violating them in the past. Except for temporary stays during considerations of constitutionality, this is a fairly rare occurence.
When laws are overturned by the courts, then all those who have been affected by them are relieved of whatever sentences have been applied. The clearest example of this was the overturning of the death penalty by the Supreme Court in 1972. At that time, all death sentences were commuted to life in prison because the death penalty, as it had been enforced until then, was found to be unconstitutional. This is also a good example of the ex post facto concept, as those who had their sentences commuted could not be resentenced under the new death penalty laws, because their crimes were committed before the new penalty laws went into effect.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Having just gotten out of my IP exam....
(1) Patents are a lot more expensive and time-consuming. Copyright is free.
(2) Copyright protects expression, (loosely defined -- computer programs have a lot of expression), patents protect inventions. Most computer programs do not have the necessary novelty and/or non-obviousness to be considered inventions.
(3) The Supreme Court has already had a chance to decide that copyright does not extend to software, but declined to do so. See Computer Associates v. Altai.
(4) The shift would effectively put all current software completely out of IP protection -- if you put your invention out for public use and don't file for a patent w/in one year, you're out of luck. Most software is > 1 year old, so this would mean no copyright, no patent.
If there's a change to be made here, it will have to be Congress doing it, not the courts.