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Dutch Say No to Software Patent Directive
Rik writes "Thursday night the Dutch parliament has decided that the Dutch government should not vote for the EU Software Patent Directive at the European Council of Ministers next week. The decision of the Dutch parliament strengthens attempts of MEPs of the European Parliament to send the Software Directive back to the drawing board."
The problem isn't patents, the problem is the patent system. We need to invest more money in the patent system so that we can separate the "stupid" patents from the legitimate ones.
Now software patents, that is a whole 'nother ball game.
As an American patriot I hate EU because it makes me hate my own corrupted government who only wants to do what's best for corporations, don't giving a damn about small business or open source. Damn you Europeans! You make me sick! Sick of jealousy!
Copyright- which has protected programmers för over 50 years !
Just saying it like it are.
Interesting proposition.
The patent system was originally instated to grant an inventor a temporary and artificial monopoly on a new invention. The first patents are found in the 15th century in the republic of Venice.
Patent abuse is nothing new. Prior to the enactement of the Statute of Monopolies in 1623, the crown would issue letters patent providing any person with a "monopoly" to produce particular goods or provide particular services. This was abused by the crown, leading to the legislation setting a term limit for the monopolies granted by a patent.
Most people seem to agree that granting an inventor a patent for novel idea or implementation fosters innovation. Let's say I invent a non-obvious and novel idea for building a smaller, lighter and more secure watertight latch for use in large cargo ships. Using this door would save shipbuilders lots of money in materials and labours. If there are no patents to protect me, any other company or individual could reverse engineer my design and sell a knock-off. Since they have little R&D costs to recuperate, they can sell it a cheaper price than me, thus preventing me from recuperating my R&D costs.
The patent system works by granting me a temporary monopoly on my design. I can choose to license it to other manufacturers, so that if they choosem to enter the market, I can still recoup my development costs.
The problem with the patent system today is that the patents are often not in the hands of those that produce and implement the patents in question. Instead, they are concentrated into holding companies that use them to cash in on patent infringments. Often these patents are neither novel nor non-obvious, so many have no idea they are infringing on a patent before they are slapped with a lawsuit.
If this model of business was to be made unprofitable, many of the problem with the patent system would vanish.
Well fine, get rid of patents for software...
But to remove the patent system entirely? Many patents in the world outside of software are held by companies that spent millions developing them. You think a paypal donate link is going to benifit them when once their piece of hardware (or whatever) is out in the world and some 3rd world company reverse engineers it and takes all their profits?
Remove the ability to protect your research and the guy who can sell the product for the least amount of money gets the money. A company spends huge amounts in R&D cannot compete with a company that only steals ideas since the company that steals ideas has far less costs.
East Coast Brewers
We need to invest more money in the patent system so that we can separate the "stupid" patents from the legitimate ones.
We don't necesseraly have to invest more money. Plain simple rules are cheaper and easier for everyone and make patents more valuable because a lot of todays uncertainty is removed. Business methods should be totally banned and every patent claim that can be implemented on a universal computing machine (software on computers). The rules have to be easy to understand and easy to follow. You will always have a gray zone of uncertainty but you can keep it as small as possible.
Dear Sir,
I am a programmer and a researcher in computer science, thus one of those supposed to benefit from a software patent system. And frankly, both from what I have experienced personnaly and from what I see in the press, I dont feel protected *at all* by software patents.
Software patents are so silly that any dispute related to them can not be based on rational argument and any form of justice that should derive from it. Those disputs are pure lawyer technical fights. They require money and are possible only between big entities (read corporations).
So, Sir, software patents are not an incentive at all. They are a way to lock the market to keep small structures and individuals out. Anybody saying the opposite is a liar or an idiot.
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Go Debian!
The problem isn't solely that inventors themselves aren't the ones receiving the patents;
The problem is also that the number of "inventors" in the realm of computer programming is very very big.
On the left hand: How many people are there that can tinker at home, and make special types of macrophages, or whatever it is that biologists do in research time?
On the right hand: How many people are there who can apply XOR to draw cursors on their home computers? I was doing that when I was 12, and I don't consider myself particularly bright.
The definition of "obvious" or "non-obvious" is not clear. I can easily imagine the baffled patent examiner, considering the XOR drawing algorithm. "Wow! This guy knows about bits, and logic gates, and,... other complicated stuff. Hot damn, that can't be obvious. We gotta do something about this... We gotta... Make sure nobody else does this for 20 years!"
20 years!
Even if the programmers are the ones receiving the checks for their "invention," we still have the same problem:
Specifically, the patent system is prohibiting innovation rather than encouraging it.
That is one thing, but I also think there is something else more specific to software, and it's not a theoretical but a practical difference.
By far most software in use today is custom-made. People create websites, design databases, and implement business rules. Just check the size of the IT consulting business. The stuff that you see on the shelf is just the tip of the iceberg.
So, the incentive for innovation is not money, it's the simple fact that you're working on a project and your customer has requested feature X. So you figure out a way to implement it. Your development costs are paid directly by your customer, and even if you did not have patent protection and everyone else implemented the same feature in the software they're writing for their customers, you'd still get paid.
Hence, innovation would still occur if software patents did not exist. Software is a service, as they say, and if you work is protected by copyright, others must do the same work (implementing feature X) again.
The big problem with software patents as they exist in the USA today, is that it is these features (one-click shopping for example) that are patented. That just doesn't make sense. It essentially gives the patent holder the right to tax anyone who implements that particular feature, in exchange for what? Thinking up new features? I don't think we need incentives for that.
Simply reducing the amount of time a patent is valid from 20 years, to about 5 years, and making them non-transferrable (ie. Company A cannot purchase patents from Company B, or acquire them by purchasing Company B) might go a long way to cleaning up the system.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
There's a small problem with that. What about the "Blinding Flash of Obvious Truth"?
Take post-it notes.
The guy was working on a new type of super-glue. Only his invention appeared to be a total failure. The glue was barely capable to hold a piece of paper. But he had enough brains to apply it to a piece of paper and sell that.
Investment in the new type of glue: maybe $50.
Time: one evening.
Profit: "3M is an $18 billion diversified technology company with leading positions in consumer and office"
The new system would protect the invention for 3 weeks, or until it gives $2000 (whichever comes first).
Some patents are too dumb nowadays. But sometimes really simple inventions are worth billions.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"