Slashdot Mirror
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."
God bless them cheeseheads! Lets all wear wooden clogs and chant stranges incantaions in recognition of their greatness!
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
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.
here
Besides that, I wonder this means they (=Brinkhorst) is actually going to vote or will abstain which would basically mean yes.
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
71 voted in favour, 69 against. Note that the Dutch parliament has 150 seats, so an extremely close call - could have gone the other way if some more people bothered to vote, it seems.
Voting was along party lines, but the Dutch parliament is like a zoo: in favour were PvdA (labour, largest leftish-center party), SP (socialist, populist, at heart even maoist...), GroenLinks (merger of communist, pacifist, green parties), D'66 (center party, slightly leftish, pro-education, pro-democratic reform), ChristenUnie (leftish christian party). Against were CDA (traditional biggest party, center, christian), VVD (what we call "liberal", i.e. pro-free market, pro-business, traditional values, typical rightish), SGP (right wing hardline christians).
Currently government is formed by CDA, VVD and D'66, who together have a slim majority. So this win is because D'66 defected, and SGP is slightly smaller. D'66 is much the smallest party in government, and this is certainly not what government wanted (remember they pushed hard to pass the directive in the last few meetings of the Dutch EU presidency end of last year). The minister pushing then was Brinkhorst (D'66!).
Anyway, this is the first time I see D'66 do something that makes me actually happy with the vote I gave them :-)
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
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.
Cheeseheads? You are lagging behind. For quite some time now, we are widthly known to be potheads.
All kidding aside, this is, imho, the first good decision our parliament has made in quite some time. Good to see there are still some remains of our once so liberal nation.
By the way, why would you chant strange incantaions in recognition of our greatness? Am I missing some reference to my own folklore here?
I'm trying to improve my English. Please correct me on any spelling/grammar errors in this post.
Each country in the EU is sovereigen and has their own government, which is controlled by their own parliament.
The governments work together in the the Council of Ministers of the EU. Here political deals are made - governments that are against patents may agree if they can get some extra agriculture subsidies in return, whatever. They can claim at home that they were against but the pressure of other countries was too high.
In theory the EU parliament controls that process, but their powers are far too weak. Perhaps the proposed "EU Constitution" will meredy this, I don't know. Governments say that giving the EU parliament more power is giving up national sovereignity (i.e., the power countries have to make shady deals).
Voting in the Council must be unanymous. A directive that is finally accepted must be implemented by all the member countries.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Here is an idea for patent reform. The person/organization that applies for a patent has to also submit evidence of the amount of resources (time and money) spent on the invention. In return, patent law, will grant them patent protection for upto 20 times the investment. Either they earn 20 times the money spent or they have protection of 20 times the number of hours spent . The number "20" is just something off the top of my head for now. Thus Jeff Bezos, after proving that it really took him all of 1 week only focussing on coming up with the 1-click process will have patent protection for 20 weeks, while a big drug company spending $1 billion on a new drug will have patent protection till it earns $20 billion on the same. If the drug company spent 4 years on developing the drug, they may also get protection for 80 years in case the $20 billion in royalties is not reached before that. In a fast changing world, 20 years of blanket patent protection for every small idea is simply too much.
I'm trying to improve my English. Please correct me on any spelling/grammar errors in this post.
Umm... easy on the pot dude. It's playing hell with your spelling.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine