EU Parliament Demands Fresh Start for Patent Directive

ravenII writes "Members of the European Parliament from countries including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden have asked for the software patent directive to be redone from scratch, according to a report on Monday."

Comments

First Thought

[RAMMS EIN]

My first thought was: the directive was stalled. The parliament got what it wanted: no legalization of software patents. Why reinitiate the debate, when you've already won? Now on to RTFA.

Patent machinery

[Lindsay Lohan]

Members of the European Parliament from countries including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden have asked for the software patent directive to be redone from scratch

The patent directive is ill-advised because it unnecessarily broadens the area that could be governed by patents. It's not even just about software patents. Patents on ideas are wrong, whether in software or in business. You should patent some concrete machinery, not a way of doing things.

Re:Patent machinery

[Znork]

If you dont have the resources for a prototype you wont have the resources to file for a patent, and you _definitely_ wont have the resources to enforce it, nor defend yourself against countersuits.

Of course, in the case of software, if you have a GREAT idea for some REVOLUTIONARY program, you'll get sued for violating several hundred different patents, losing the savings and venture capital you'd managed to scrape up, and driven to living on the streets in personal bankrupcy before you've finished your first thousand lines of code.

Personally I'd rather have the legal right to invent without getting sued than the right to sue without inventing.

Re:Patent machinery

[Qzukk]

Wasn't the purpose of patents to allow us little guys to profit from a good idea without having to risk our future on it?

From where I stand, its not doing that. Not even close. I'm working with a startup, and we thought about patenting our software, and the first thing we did was run into someone else who has patented something similar (the only difference is that their patent calls for two databases to do what we can do with one database and logic). Having spent more than it would have cost to file a patent ourselves on a lawyer, search, and the reactive scramble, we decided it wasn't worth it.

Even as it is, externally our program shows no difference at all to the patented algorithm, since it does essentially the same thing in an internally different way. Eventually we'll probably be sued, and millions of dollars in fees and legal expenses later, finally convince a jury that no, two databases are not the same as one database and a handful of user-supplied rules. And thats if we're not forced to open our codebase to our competitor, after which we'd pretty much be dead. It'd be what, two days? a week? Before they update their software with new rule-based operation that they just "thought of" and we'd never be able to prove they stole.

Re:Patent machinery

[hacksoncode]

Interesting theory, but in fact software isn't literary in nature, it is functional. In fact, it's copyright that more accurately could be said to not apply by this kind of reasoning. In any event, whether or not copyright or patents for software are statutory or not depends on the entire body of statutes, not just the ones you happen to want to read. These other statutes state that it is both (which is odd... functional inventions are supposed to only be patentable).

Re:Patent machinery

[AviLazar]

Reading this I wonder wether you actually have ever programmed over a couple lines, or even ever invented anything worth patenting. Give another 10.000 people the same problem, and someone is bound to come up with the same idea you had - or better. And if you have a patent on a worse version of their idea, they won't be able to patent it, due to some douchbag w/o the amount of brain required to finish an idea.

I write plenty of code but that has nothing to do with the argument.

Our society subscribes to the "first come first serve"...the first person to patent the process gets the credit (as long as they didn't steal it but that is something out of our scope). So you may have a problem with this process - but many people do not. Why you ask? Well lets see - I patent something and someone comes along, copies my stuff, relabels it and then says "oh look I am going to patent it too." kind of lame no? So I would imagine (hope) that this is not your problem.
So what is your problem - ahh your last statement in your first paragraph - the part about the idiots at the patent office. Well we all know that the solution to this problem is to destroy the law. God forbid we get qualified people working at the patent office, no lets just get rid of a pretty useful law that has been serving us for over a hundred years.

Groups of invididuals?

[AtariAmarok]

"need to make it so that no corporations can own patents. Only individuals or groups of individuals should own patents.

See bold text for contradiction.

"An entire corporation is too big and too financially strong of an entity to own a patent."

The overwhelming majority of corporations are very small, and many are weak and failing.

Fantastic

[Turn-X Alphonse]

They will get rid of one problem and add another. All we need. Theres no single way to make a patent law which can't be abused by large companies, we live in a world which leans in moneys favour, they have it, we don't.

Good game, we lost see you next round.. erm wait sorry someone patented rounds, we can't use that either.

Re:Good or Bad News?

[Fire Dragon]

Many of the new member states are new to capitalism and have more extreme capitalist views than the old members.

Poland is one of the new memberstates and it is also new to capitalism. Still it has been one of the countries agaist(to my understanding) software patens.

New eastern memberstates don't have any signifiend software industry at the moment, so they would lose their change to enter the market if patents would be allowed at this moment. Their view might change after IT industry gets bigger in there.

how important is the patent question to them ?

[Eternally optimistic]

How much of this is a power stuggle between the parliament and the comission? The outcome of that could be just as important as the software patent question.

The lesson I learned..

[SlashDread]

No matter how un-effing-believable un-democratic EU ministers can be, and you MUST research the EU patent story for some disgusting examples, the people -directly elected- in the EU parliament have listened and -do- hold some power. Yay.

Now if only we (as in we, the people) could get more direct say in EU minister appointments, or resignments.. we would not have to go through all this absurdian EU counsil of minister elbow politics.

We should look at the US.. some things clearly work better there, and some things do not. Much local power for example.. good idea. Big Money and politics.. bad idea.

software patents vs. patent system as a whole

[brlewis]

I'm vehemently against software patents, but I'm not really ready to dismantle the patent system as a whole. In some fields the R&D costs are high enough that I can see society benefiting from trading a temporary monopoly for publication of the technology. Software is obviously different. I think software patents have to be taken out of the picture before you can have a good discussion about the system as a whole.

Perspective Is Needed

[tilleyrw]

1. The number of tasks that can exist in the world is infinite.

2. The population of minds to solve said tasks is finite.

3. QED, the set of solutions is finite.

Therefore, patents should not exist.

If the set of solutions is finite, it is only a matter of time before elements are repeated.

"There is nothing new under the sun."

Grassroots

[Dachannien]

I realize the article is primarily about the EU. But it's also about software patents, and being a citizen of the US, I'm interested in what I as a mere citizen can do to fight for patent reform (the kind against software patents, of course) in my country. And considering that there's a strong tendency to legislate through treaty these days, especially between the US and UK, and especially in the realms of IP law, a success against software patents in the US is a success for the world in general.

Anyway....

Are there any US Representatives or Senators who have USPTO reform and the elimination of software patents on their agendas? Are there any who support the OSS and/or Free Software movements? Is there a process by which individual US citizens can file prior art claims against patents (either in the application stage or after granting them) without spending a god-awful amount of money on legal representation, and if so, how does that process work? Are there any industry players (other than Linus and others in the Free Software arena) who have come out as supporting the elimination of software patents?

I guess, in total, I'm asking this: is my time/effort/money better spent as an individual citizen on this issue, or should I just give my dollars to the EFF and let them fight on my behalf?

Re:UK conspicuously unmentioned...

[indierockboy]

It was to Chris Huhne a Liberal Democrat...

The reply from his secretary starts with:

"I refer to your recent email to Chris Huhne MEP. I am his senior advisor and he has asked me to reply on his behalf.

I am sorry this is a very long reply, but I hope you will get through it all. This is necessary for a full understanding because I am afraid that most of the reporting about what this legislation covers is very wrong. It is not quite clear why there is such a belief that it is intended to lead Europe down the US path"

She says...

"To be effective a patent must cover the concept as well as the detail of the invention, so although a computer program listing might be given as an example of how to perform part or all of an invention, the patent claims (the bit that defines, legally, what is covered) would not be so specific and usually relate to the method steps that are implemented in the software."

Quite worrying really...

Not sure what to write back... Its pretty obvious that she just does NOT understand why this is bad. And how it could seriously FUCK UP open source usage and development in Europe...

EU patents a bad thing

[prunesqualour]

There's a decent piece in today's Guardian about patents on software. Interest declared: I wrote it.