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Poland Blocks European Software Patent Vote, For Now
Anonymous Brave Guy writes "Thanks to the Polish Minister of Science and Information Technology, Wlodzimierz Marcinski, Europe has dropped the current proposal for software patents. He made a special journey to Brussels to withdraw the proposal, basically in protest at the way the patents were being pushed through by the back door. Since the European presidency is about to pass to Luxembourg, this has effectively killed the idea, at least for the immediate future." More at FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure). This means that the promised move to delay actually worked.
at least slashdot didn't forget about poland. :)
EU readers please Thank Poland!
This may be only a temporary reprieve, but it could also, quite possibly, be a sign that the tides may be changing in the Council. Let's all hope for the best, and do what we can to make it happen.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
I for one am grateful to our Polish voting overlords.
It's about time one of the countries in Europe had a government with a spine. I'm from the UK and ours doesn't, unless it's about introducing draconian ID card measures without listening to anyone and ignoring any consultation it required and dismissing it as irrelivant.
Go POLAND!!!
In other news, Canada reports many cancellations of immigration requests from EU citizens...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Well, let's hope they have more influence on software patents than they've had on greenhouse gas emission reductions and foreign policy.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Now Polish people get to tell EU jokes.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
First of all, European companies can obtain software patents in the US, thereby effectively eliminating possible competition from that part of the world, while establishing a market in the EU. Once these companies make the move over, they've got their protection through the USPTO racket scheme.
Second. US companies respecting the software patents of other US companies will not be able to develop products based on these patents (unless cross-licensing is in place), quite obviously. This will give them a huge disadvantage when trying to bring products to Europe: they won't be able to use particular techniques their local competitors in EU markets will be able to use, and all stuff they have protection for over in the US can be copied by this local competition.
So my guess is that when US companies are starting to hurt from this both inside the US and outside of it, there's going to be some reconsideration of patent law.
Even though people pull jokes and Poland's not really been any of the 'top ranked' countries in the west (or the east for that matter); I have never been prouder of being polish!
Double-check your Hollywood History of the World, dude. You'll find it was a bunch of Americans.
The US has to get their patent system in order or it will collapse. The only real purpose for the patent system with software is to employ lawyers in the software business and to harass innovative companies competing with larger companies. Both are counterproductive in developing computer technologu and for that mater mankinds development.
The EU wants to develop their software business and do not want to let the likes of Microsoft come in and stifle growth with legal harassment. Even if you do no infringe, the mere fact a small company or individual is legally challenged is enough to put them out and under. The EU is doing it right by not letting in US legal problems into their system. A good recent example is how long and how far can SCO go before someone puts the execs in jail for extortion? Or perhaps the SEC for stock manipulation.
And since most software patents can find their root in previous works or ideas developed in public universities and not really inside the business they originated in, most are fraudulent patents. Patents were meant to protect the original developing company from infringement. Microsoft didn't invent windows, XEROX/PA did. MIT did X before Microsoft had an OS. So So by rights, any patent on Windows by Microsoft is derived work and not an original invention. These patents should be rejected.
Unless Canada and the US revise the law, I figure in 3-5 years most of our software will come from EU, India or China. Want a software development job, go to EU, India or China. Poland has the right idea, it will develop and keep their people at home.
He has been an IT manager in private business and studied Mathematics - i almost wet my pants of happiness as i read his CV. :) - Heres to Wlodzimierz Marcinski!
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This is one politician i want to decide such matters as he actually has knowledge of what he is doing. Im so glad Poland is now in the EU
I wish we had politicians like him in Denmark when we decide IT politics
You make an insightful point and I sure hope you are right, but the EU never had software patents, so surely this pressure existed before as well? If so, it doesn't seem to have had any success...
... recall the graphcal story earlier today).
... if Europe, Japan, China, and India can hold out against US pressure that long.
Software patents have indeed existed for quite some time in the US. However, they have only been actively used in litigation recently (though they have had chilling effects via the threat of litigation for much longer
However, I can think of at least one instance where the lack of software patents abroad changed the political and corporate landscape in America: PGP Encryption. PGP was written at a time when the export of basic encryption software was banned in the US (it had to be printed in book form, then shipped overseas, and typed into a computer by volunteers over there). To make matters worse, the RSA algorithm was patented in the United States (but nowhere else). The software was exported in book form, made available on the net, and used widely both inside and outside the US. Had software patents existed in Europe at the time, it is likely that those making PGP available in Europe would have been sued, not so much as a means of stopping the patent violation, but as a means of enforcing America's "no encryption for them damn foreigners" policy through the back door of patent litigation...with the result that we'd all probably still be browsing with trivially crackable 40-bit encryption today.
Instead, PGP being loose in the world, and a dozen non-American encryption companies taking advantage of the lack of patents on RSA outside of the US, and the lack of competititon from US companies hamstrung by both the software patent on RSA and the governments "don't export encryption on pain of FBI interrogation" policy, led to the collapse of said policy.
The patent expired a few years later, but by then the point was largely moot, as a number of better algorithms had been developed in Europe and, as Europe had no software patents, were available for all to use freely.
Software patents, and the lack of them, played an important, if not dominant, part in these events, and as a result we no longer have dumbed-down "international" versions of our browsers, and gnuPG is available to everyone all over the world.
Now software patents are being used more and more in litigation, and the pressures the grandparent describes are beginning to be felt by American companies. The pro-patent lobby knows this, and they know they only have a limited amount of time to get software patents imposed on Europe, or these pressures will reach a sufficient point to wake up American corporations to the fact that patents, and software patents in particular, are not in their best interests.
I suspect 5 years will be enough for this to run its course
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