Slashdot Mirror
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."
the outsourcing industry of India...
Most folks are more worried about the after effects of the tsunami, and aftershocks than patents right now.
India enacts software patent law... nobody seems to care.
... nobody seems to care.
... nobody seems to care.
/. even by AC's is that we direct our energy away from our respective governments and toward our friends and neighbors.
/.er as anything more than a wanna-be pirate. Legislators look at those who have the knowledge to tinker but are not corporate engineers being paid to testify with suspiciion. They must surely be self-serving software pirates worthy only of scorn.. at least until the timer needs to be set on the VCR. Geeks are not a voting block.
The United States enact
Poland blocks IP law
The common thread here is really a lack of concern by the masses about what the law is in this area. Is this really an issue of law being made only for the big corporations, or is it a question of lack of education & information among the rest?
Perhaps the real solution to the problems of IP law, as almost universally recognized on
That officials enacting IP law will seldom see the
The solution then, is to explain to Grandpa why software patents are bad. Grandpa is no dummy. If we can survive working tech-support over the telephone, we can explain IP to Grandpa in person when we visit for Christmas.
It will be easier than it sounds. People love to have rights, even if they don't fully understand them. Show a man his rights are being violated and the righteous indignation begins to swell. All Grandpa needs to really understand is that, when IP laws are toughened, when copyrights are extended, that takes away something from HIM... then he will speak up. When granpa speaks, the government listens.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
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!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
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.
Medicines.
With the establishment of this ordinance, which will expire after a time and have to be reintroduced as a bill in Parliament, medicines in India, including lifesaving ones, will cost up to four times to a hundred times more than they do now.
The current government is forced to enact this law under it's obligations under the WTO's TRIPS. However, the draft Bill not only fails to use the flexibility available within the TRIPS Agreement but also goes beyond TRIPS. In other words, the draft Bill proposes patent protection more than what is required under TRIPS.
Civil society organisations believe that draft Bill provisions would give monopoly rights to pharmaceutical companies at the cost of accessibility and availability of drugs under the product patent regime. It's worth noting here that the Right to Health is a Fundamental Right under the Indian Constitution.
Here's a link which details the situation. Here's a fact sheet on the issue of Generic Drugs as well as a document called the Myths and Realities of the Pharmaceutical Industry that the European Generic Medicines Association has prepared. The movement against the amendment in the law is being spearheaded by the Affordable Medicines and Treatment Campaign. Here's a letter to the Prime Minister of India that you can send if you wish to help out as well as one letter to the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission.
What bothers me is that when asked to bend before Intellectual Property Rights, we have begun to crawl. Aniruddha "Karim" Shankar
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.
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):
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.
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