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EU Software Patents Delayed Again
Lord An writes "It seems the decision about software patents in Europe has been delayed again for at least a week (link in German). Once again we have to thank Poland that the corresponding item was removed from the A-list of the Council of Agriculture and Fisheries. Hopefully this delay will be enough that the opposition vs. the patents will finally get the upper hand." Non-German speakers might find it useful to plug that URL into the Fish.
Normally, turning a political agreement in a common position is just a formality. That's the reason why it can be done by any kind of Council formation.
Of course, in this case we have the fact that Poland really abstained in May (although they were recorded as voting in favour) and that since November change of voting weights there no longer is a qualified majority because of this, the fact that the Dutch parliament asked its government to change the pro-vote into an abstention, a similar motion by the German Bundestag etc.
Diplomatic inertia is a powerful force to fight, however: political agreements are "always" turned into a common position, so they want to do it this time as well, even though it's completely against democratic principles.
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While I oppose software patents as they are currently implemented in the US I disagree with some of your statements,
[QUOTE]Its why Bill Gates, a college drop-out, could build a multi-billion dollar company out of nothing but the ideas in his head.[/QUOTE]
Mr. Gates first sales were of a compiler and operating system to IBM. The OS he purchased from another programmer, and the compiler followed many of the same ideas and designs of DEC Basic (I've heard unsubstantiated rumors that he had looked at the source from the DEC Basic compiler), also he apparently used bios code that he did not have copyright to.
Mr. Gates has had superb business sense and has had tremendous success with his leadership of Microsoft, but I'm not sure how much of his success can be attributed to 'nothing but ideas in his head'.
[QUOTE]Patents should not apply to software for the simple reason that they would do far more harm than good, harming creativity rather than promoting it.[/QUOTE]
With the state of patenting as it currently is I agree, but if changes were made so that patents are 'properly' rewarded - ie restricted to true innovations that require a reasonable amount of risk and investment, then I would disagree.
[QUOTE]Software doesn't need patents, copyright is more than adequate to provide the incentive software engineers need to turn their ideas into software. The cost to society of a 20 year monopoly over a software invention will never be justified, because it is inconceivable that any software invention could require such a powerful incentive. The price for this monopoly is paid by other inventors, and so the effect is to stifle innovation, not to promote it.[/QUOTE]
Some software ideas are difficult to create - ie the SHA encryption algorithm, but can readily implemented by a competent programmer. I don't see how copyright would be adequate incentive to create such notrivial ideas. Not to say that other incentives might work as well for many inventors (ie pride, curiousity, prestige, reciprocity, etc.).
The real problem is that patents should only be awarded in any field based on innovativeness - the likelyhood that it could or would have been invented without a substantial investment of sweat equity. There also needs to be a method where if an idea is broadly useful, that even if it is highly innovative and patentable, the rights can be purchased to it to make it generally available for usage (ie perhaps a government patent buyback or some such).
LetterRip
SHA is a security protocol, the value of SHA is proportional to the number of people who looked at the source and tryed to break it. Sure you probably need a security expert, or even several ones to come up with SHA. It is not simple, but the harder work is on the hand of those others who try to break it, and in this process validate it. Shouldn't those be rewarded also?
DMCA and other laws that protect the "intelectual property" is already harming this. In France, Guillaume Tena, is in jail for the simple reason that he validate a piece of saoftware and found ou that it has bugs. The bad thing is that this not even involve patents, it is copywrite and anti-reverse-engenieer laws.
I believe that copywrite and patents and almost any form of "intelectual property" is harmfull. science and arts do evolve by copying(*) of good ideas of others. How many movies of great directors you saw that "cite" or makes "homages" to other movies and other directors? This is a kind of copy, rewrite and rehash is part of creating, we as a society must learn to live with it.
As it stand, sometimes a copy is better then the original.
(*) Coping here is used refering to rewrites or re-enactments of a piece or many pieces of another work. Not to word-to-word or byte-by-byte xerox copy.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
There was talk in autumn 2000 about a 'consultative process' and the results were published in March 2001 (obviously an in-depth process) which effectively said: "Some think software patents are good, others think they are bad." (You get what you pay for, eh, what?).
In my humble and unprejudiced opinion, Patricia Hewitt is a brain-dead industry yes-woman ("...outsourcing is good. We have appointed the CEO of an Indian outsourcing company to determine the effects and will be reporting soon...").
Did he inhale?
You've clearly never tried to implement a C library then. I still have *printf induced nightmares.
"Thank you for your letter, which I read with interest, and the points
you made. The Labour MEPs' position on software patents is reflected in
the amendments we tabled and voted for in the Parliament's report on the
Commission proposal on the patentability of computer-implemented
inventions. In short, the position remains:
* No US-style patenting of software.
* Software as such, must not be patented. No patenting of
business methods or "general ideas"
* Opensource software must be allowed to flourish and the
Commission must ensure that this Directive does not have any adverse
effect on opensource software and small software developers.
* Patents and the threat of litigation must not be used as an
anti-competitive weapon to squeeze out small companies.
The Member States and European Commission will negotiate with Parliament
on our amendments and we hope we can achieve an outcome which will limit
and restrict the patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
As you are aware the European Patent Office has already handed down some
40,000 software patents and without an EU directive we could end up
drifting towards extending patentability to business methods, algorithms
or mathematical methods, as is the case in the US.
Labour MEPs are not voting to introduce software patents but to limit
patents."
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams