India Quietly Introduces Software Patents

bain_online writes " The Business-Standard of India reports: The Cabinet is expected to clear the promulgation of an Ordinance for the introduction of a product patents regime, which will also cover embedded software and hardware, next Wednesday. There are other news sites reporting the same. Unfortunately, the majority of the Indian people are not the least bit concerned, resulting in very low coverage for this important development."

Comments

Another one bites the dust

[KlomDark]

Another confirmation that all government activity is only for the rich. Sure, it's naive to think otherwise, but it would be nice if they told the truth about it rather than filling us with utopian bullshit about how it's for the "greater good of all".

Re:Another one bites the dust

[SerpentMage]

That is such a pile of BS! Patents do not protect little guys from the big guys. That is a figment of our imagination. Maybe 100 years ago that was the case, but it is definitely not the case today.

To file a patent you need a lawyer, which costs money, then you need more money to defend your patent. A patent in North America costs about 20K USD, and in Europe 40K Euro's. The only "little" people who can do this are lawyers themselves. Notice how many times Slashdot covers the story of a small company with a broad patent? And notice how those small companies are lawyer driven. That is the reality folks!

Patents need to undergo a radical change because the premise of a patent is that a single person comes up with a single unique thought that is not obvious. Well, that is impossible in this day and age!

Re:Another one bites the dust

[Waffle Iron]

The US Patent system, had it worked correctly, would have saved a number of budding software companies from Microsoft.

Yes, if software patents had been widespread from the start, there would be no Microsoft as we know it. In fact, we would just be entering a golden age of computing right now:

The Visicalc spreadsheet patents would have just expired a few years ago, allowing Lotus-123 to get started.

The Xerox GUI patents would have recently expired, so Apple could have introduced the Mac at the turn of the millennium.

The id first-person-shooter patents would be expiring in a few short years from now. The whole gaming industry would be abuzz with anticipation of 3D games from more than one vendor!

We would have only about 8 more years of paying royalties to CERN for browsing the web. In a few years, software vendors would be starting to plan features for a long-awaited successor to the Mosaic browser.

Linux would just now be able to host the kinds of server tasks that were common in the mid 80s, and more capabilities would become legal each year!

Driven by the demands created by the burgeoning patent-protected software market, Intel would be introducing the Pentium I just about now.

Re:Another one bites the dust

[Air-conditioned cowh]

Sound like Ford decided to be nice to him that day. They didn't have to be.

If Ford had just stolen his idea then what could he have done? How much would it have cost him to take any action?

Re:Another one bites the dust

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

You are correct as far as near-clones of existing software. What you forget was the original intent of patents.

With a guaranteed monopoly for creating something new and no chance of copying old ideas before they become too unprofitable, the bright minds of these decades would have been brainstorming and coming up with new ideas to patent them for themselves. Imagine what could have been done if Linus Torvalds had spent his energy on developing a new paradigm for operating systems instead of just cloning the existing Unices. Imagine if Richard Stallman had spent his time on more software like Emacs - whose fundamental idea of an intertwined editor and scripting language had not been seen before - instead of working on the Hurd, which replicates not only existing OSes but also Linux. Imagine if Bill Gates had used his genius to code more and clone/buy less.

We're only really getting XML, journaled/databased file systems, truly portable technology, etc. today. By forcing the bright minds to innovate instead of just creating clones of existing ideas, we'd've had these for years now. As an example in gaming, there would be more Katamari Damacies and less Random Celebrity's Pro Sportsgame or Race Around New Scenery 2004s.

And you also forget that patents can be licensed. Bungie could've doubtless licensed id's FPS patent for enough money to satisfy id, but made enough on Halo to pay back the license and still make as much money as they actually did - remember that there wouldn't've been as many FPSes on the market.

Mind you, I'm not supporting software patents today. With the market evolved the laissez-faire way it did, open-source and free patents are almost necessary to be fair to the consumer. But if software patents had been in effect since the early 1980s, the market would've had a lot less simple repetition and much more true innovation or actual improvements on existing products.

Re:Another one bites the dust

[MacDork]

That is such a pile of BS! Patents do not protect little guys from the big guys. That is a figment of our imagination. Maybe 100 years ago that was the case, but it is definitely not the case today.

No. Not now. Not 100 years ago. Not ever.

• They [The Wright Brothers] had hoped that their patent would be respected from the start. When that did not occur, they placed their hopes in defending their patent in court. With the patent defended, they assumed that when other manufacturers at last began turning out aircraft in reasonable quantity, paying a royalty on each one, they could devote themselves to other research, not necessarily in aviation.

What? You thought the German's payed the Wright brothers a royalty for every airplane manufactured in WWI?

Probably got other things on their mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Most folks are more worried about the after effects of the tsunami, and aftershocks than patents right now.

Since the vast majority of programming there goes

[human bean]

on with open source software tooling, and everyone borrowing things from each other, one would think that the technical folks there would have a clue.

I suspect this is proposed as a way for the larger corporations who attempt to control the Hindi programmer "market" to shut out the smaller split-offs and startups.

Funny. I guess they didn't suffer enough through the British raj and so now they do it to themselves.

Very Important

[MyLongNickName]

Yes, when hundreds of millions of people are living in abject poverty, this important development gets ignored.

Methinks some people need to gain a bit of perspective. In the hierarchy of human needs, I do not remember reading about software patent issues.

Re:This isn't about software patents....

[Halo1]

TFA is talking about modifications to process patents, not software patents. While it may affect embedded software (and there's still a question about whether or not that will be legal, according to a previous poster), it won't affect normal software until the law gets changed further.

They try to mask it in exactly the same way in Europe. "Software as such will remain unpatentable, only computer-implemented inventions will become patentable!". Now what is a "computer-implemented invention"? A computer running software fulfills that definition.

It sounds to me that it's similar in India: "only" computers running software will be patentable, but who cares? What are you going to do otherwise with your software? Print it out and use it as wallpaper?

While India gets it backwards...

[ventonegro]

Brazil is getting more and more involved with Open Source software. The Ministry of Communications has just offered to sponsor the development of an open source software they need. This can put us seriously ahead.

Re:Great news for Americans and Europeans!

[RealBorg]

Sooner or later the rich will learn that all the money they own cannot safe them from the rage of the starving population, one way or the other.

Re:Lack of interest?!?!

[Chandon Seldon]

Because obviously two things can't both matter at the same time.

I'm not saying that tens of thousands of people dying in a natural disaster isn't very tragic, but it doesn't make the software patent issue any less important.

In fact - because of the tendancy to focus on easily-understood problems - issues like software patents become even more relevent when there's some event to distract from them.

The people died from the tsunami already. Whatever processes are going to rescue surviors and rebuild are already in motion. The issue's getting extensive coverage in all news media. I'd say that here, on slashdot, in this topic, the Patent issue is *far* more important and relevent.

How naive

[Baki]

What is really sad is that patent lobbyists use times like these to push through their ways quietly, while public attention is looking elsewhere. It is very naive to not give a crap about it, even now.

I see arm twisting...

[fromme]

Commerce ministry sources said the government still had a week's time to comply with the deadline but a failure to do so could result in punitive action on textiles.

So, if India doesn't comply with the WTO on software patents, their textiles are to going to cost more abroad? Hmmm!

I wonder if the WTO would do the same with China?

Re:This may not be that bad...

[AstroDrabb]

I don't understand your logic about software patents. You state:

Like the RSA algorithm (patent now expired). That is a legitimate invention . . .

Then you continue:

However, things like the recent Microsoft "IsNot" patent should not be patentable. That is an attempt at a land grab. Also the patenting file formats in order to try and collect "tax" revenue from the Internet should not be permitted.

The MS IsNot operator patent and other software patents are _all_ bad. They are all just instructions to a computer. So you either have to allow the patenting of _all_ instructions to a computer or _no_ instructions to a computer. You cannot allow some and not the others.

You probably think the RSA algorithm is OK to patent because it is a little complex to you. Well it is not complex to everyone. We cannot allow "complex" software instructions to be patented while not allowing "non-complex" software instructions to be patented. Exactly who gets to pick which set of software instructions are "complex" vs. "non-complex"? As it is now, it is a non-technical patent examiner. To him, _all_ software instructions are complex.

IMO, no software should be patentable. All software are just computer instructions. Can I patent the instructions to cook chicken soup? How about the instructions to brush your teeth? If I were allowed to patent those, I would be a very rich man! I say allow HARDWARE to be patented, but not software. Neither allow a hardware/software combination. Just the hardware please.

[Insert argument about how big companies spend a lot of time and money on writing software instructions here].

Well, I could spend a lot of time and money on writing instructions to brush your teeth, tie your shoes or install your own home security system. Why should I not be allowed to patent those instructions while a software company is allowed to patent their instructions?

SW patents offer no "protection" for "small" devs.

[jbn-o]

he US Patent system, had it worked correctly, would have saved a number of budding software companies from Microsoft.

You are repeating a myth that is easily debunked by examining how cross-licensing works from the perspective of the "budding software compan[y]". Quoting RMS from his talk on the danger with software patents (or listen to the speech):

This phenomenon of cross-licensing refutes a common myth, the myth of the starving genius. The myth that patents "protect" the "small inventor". Those terms are propaganda terms. You shouldn't use them. The scenario is like this: Suppose there is a brilliant designer of whatever. Suppose he has spent years starving in the attic designing a new wonderful kind of whatever and now wants to manufacture it and isn't it a shame the big companies are going to go into competition with him, take away all the business and he'll "starve". I will have to point out that people in high tech fields are not generally working on their own and that ideas don't come in a vacuum, they are based on ideas of others and these people have pretty good chances of getting a job if they need to these days. So this scenario, the idea that a brilliant idea came from this brilliant person working alone is unrealistic and the idea that he is in danger of starving is unrealistic. But it is conceivable that somebody could have an idea and this idea along with 100 or 200 other ideas can be the basis of making some kind of product and that big companies might want to compete with him. So let's see what happens if he tries to use a patent to stop them. He says "Oh No, IBM. You cannot compete with me. I've got this patent." IBM says "let's see. Let's look at your product. Hmmm. I've got this patent and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one, which parts of your product infringe. If you think you can fight against all of them in court, I will just go back and find some more. So, why don't you cross license with me?" And then this brilliant small inventor says "Well, OK, I'll cross license". So he can go back and make these wonderful whatever it is, but so can IBM. IBM gets access to his patent and gets the right to compete with him, which means that this patent didn't "protect" him at all.

Also, note how the difference in the number of patents obtained: IBM has the most patents (so many that they can insulate themselves from the damage the patent system causes). Most "inventors" are not multinational corporations like IBM, HP, Apple, Microsoft, etc. and if they have any patents at all they only have patents that cover the wonderful something they're working on.

Therefore, when IBM gets a license by pressuring a small developer into cross-licensing, IBM gets virtually 100% of the small "inventor"'s patents but gives a license for a very small percentage of its patents. When multinationals cross-license they don't have this imbalance, so they cannot be bullied into cross-licensing all that they have. The imbalance and ill effect for the small "inventor" point out how what you are saying is a myth. Your post is highly overrated.