Slashdot Mirror
Euro Patent Restart Demand Repeated by Parliament
sebFlyte writes "ZDNet UK is reporting that the European Parliament's Conference of Presidents has ratified and repeated the demands of the Parliament for the computer-implemented inventions directive to be sent back to the drawing board, even though the Commission has refused to re-start it after previous demands. From the article: "It is not certain that the Commission will comply with the request of the Parliament, nor that it will use the opportunity to draft a good text ... The new Commission is not obliged to follow the Parliament's request and they might still try to keep all options open and ask the Council to adopt the agreement of last May without a new vote, so as to gain even more options for themselves."
Perhaps a bit off-topic, but if software CAN'T be patented, then couldn't one LEGALLY take that unpatented open source code and make a commercial product out of it, thus negating the GPL? (IANAL, and it shows)
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
FTA [i]Hugo Lueders, the director of public policy at pro-patent organisation CompTIA, is also unsure what will happen next. He contends that software patents are needed to ensure that the EU can keep to the goals set by the "Lisbon Agenda" --- that the EU will become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy by 2010.[/i] Does that comment sound like: 1. Establish Software Patents 2. ??????? 3. Thriving and Inventive Computer Industry (ha!) 4. Profit! to anyone else?!?
I consider myself a pro-European Brit, but the intransigence and power of the unelected Commision to act in the face of the elected Parliament makes me foam at the mouth like Norman Tebbit. Is it really so hard for them to see that those with a mandate should be sovereign?
I want a close and strong European Union -- I just don't want this European Union.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The players:
European Parliament's Conference of Presidents
the Commission
the Parliament
The new Commission
the Council
Ok, I'm lost. Though I think I can see why nothing's happening.
It reminds me of a The Committee Game someone wrote on our PDP11 about 25 years ago. (The committee forms to form a plan of action to deal with the nefarious Kally Spaeth, but first they head up to McDonalds for refreshments in the arcane Dodge Dart, and generally it's a lot of running around without actually doing anything about the nefarious Kally Spaeth. I think it was in parody.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...when a body which purports to be democratic does not listen to those who represent the people. We have spoken, we have shouted, we have sent you nasty emails. If the bill gets carried, it will indicate that the European Union is designed to give people the appearance of having democratic power with the parliament, while the real power resides with commission, who seem emminantly influenced by big business.
If the commish ignored the last demand, why would they pay attention to this one? Or is this just for the parliament to make their objections absolutely clear?
Also, question: Is the EU parliament in the end going to be, or are they right now, as pissed off about this as Slashdot seems to be? I mean, whether the parliament cares about patents or not, you'd think. In the U.S. if a branch of government got outright snubbed like this they'd probably wind up doing everything in their power to kill the idea of software patents forever, even if they didn't really care about software patents, just out of spite
and don't understand world events... But the Commission has more power than the Parliament and can get legislation to the Council that the Council has to act on?
Is the fear that there are enough votes in the Council that this will pass?
Does the EU even *have* a government? This is so confusing! Motions that can be executed with no vote, organizational groups that do what they want regardless of the vote? What gives? It's like the thing was designed *by*, bureucrats *for* bureaucrats, and voting is just a technicality.
Can somebody help to make me less ignorant and point me at an online EU-civics 101 tutorial that outlines how the EU government is organized, what are the responsibilities of the major components and a general overview of the rules?
Please?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Would someone please clarify the players in EU lawmaking, and their role in the process? America at least has floated cartoons making our quaint process clear to naive schoolchildren (of any age). Where do members of the following bodies come from: election by people per nation / across the EU; or sent as representatives of national governments; or selected by the EU government itself? Where do the laws/regulations/rules/treaties/agreements they produce come from: national governments; EU government subdivisions; independent citizens; overseas committees like the US; nongovernment foreign or European policy organizations? And where do the rules they produce go: to another body for decision, to national governments for ratification, or just into effect as law?
The players:
- EU Parliament
- EU Commission
- EU Council
- Any others (like, eg, some kind of "EU Parliament/Council Reconciliation Committe")?
--
make install -not war
The BBC coverage of this issue states that "The open source movement, of which Linux is the flagbearer, eschews notions of property and instead allows anyone to examine and tinker with the inner workings of software."
As a BBC license payer, I'm incensed that they could be spreading such FUD. Since when has Linux "eschewed the notion of property"?
Just because the open source community is vehemently opposed to software patents, doesn't mean that they don't support the "notion of property". Without such notions as copyright for instance, the GPL would be impossible.
could you please get your noses out of the air long enough to explain how such a goverment could have been designed in your socialist utopia?
At least we can vote our crappy politicians out of office to make them responsive
yes, I am trolling - but I still wanted to ask
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
This is great news, I hope that everyone who has not contacted their MEP will do so via faxmymp or otherwise. I may even go to the effort of sending a letter in the post to mine to say thanks, and to continue to listen elected voters over companies. Remember the parliment makes the decision based on voters preferances, it it just up to us to tell MEPs what we want.
The GPL is based on copyright law, not patent law.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Conference of Presidents, Council, Commission, Parliament.... For the poor confused Americans among us, could somebody draw us the European equivalent of the "how a bill becomes law" flow chart? I'm completely lost.
--Bruce Fields
Did they "demand" or "request" the restart? Both are claimed in TFSummary, and being from outside the EU I'm ignorant of which body is able to demand this kind of thing...
Hartmut Pilch, the president of pressure group the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII)...
So Europe has 'pressure groups', while America has lobbyists. Maybe that's our problem -- '**AA lobbyist' sounds too warm and fuzzy. They should be renamed 'motion picture pressure group' or 'recording industry pressure group'. That's got a nice evil ring to it.
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
Nobody wanted this in the first place - except patent lawyers, patent offices and a few large software companies.
Before the directive was proposed by the European Commission, software patents were rejected twice by governments at international diplomat conferences on the change of the European Patent Convention.
Before the directive was proposed the European Commission held a public hearing. 91% of those responding were against software patents. 47% of the rest were patent lawyers and patent offices.
When the European Commission proposed the directive they sent out a press release saying the directive was to make software less patentable (liars!).
The only elected institution in EU is the European Parliament. Here the proposed directive was amended to not allowing unlimited patentability of all software and business metods.
Later the European Counsil amended the directive again, undoing most of the amendments the the Parliament did.
And now the European Commission and the Counsil (both non-elected, but appointed) are pressing to go through with the directive, completely ignoring the rights of the European Parliament.
Anyone care to post some information on the best way to contact your MEP(s), this is getting silly and i may have to take action ;)
It's been provided before, but i cant find it now.
Who is in charge over there?
How is the government supposed to work?
Why do they vote on some things and not others?
Are there multiple mechanisms to pass laws?
Are the "parliament" and the "commission" similar to our "house" and "senate"?? That would explain the back and forth, but it doesn't look like they both need to approve of this thing to make it happen.
Regardless, I've told my european friends and coworkers to watch that their new government doesn't do like ours and take control from the states and later hand it over to large corporations. They all laughed.... even I didn't expect it to happen so quickly.
It seems likely that this modernization of the software law will take months to break through the many layers of European Union legal bureaucracy, it may be a few years before a competant software law is seen in its place.
Last time an attempt was made to get the ball rolling on this issue, Polish MEP's rejected it, thus it was pushed back. I mean for christs sake, when a country as insignifant Poland can effectively veto a law as paramount to modern IT and computing as this one, you know somethings wrong with the EU's dealing of legislation.
In the US system the whole thrust is to keep the government from running wild and stomping the people.
First the powers are limited.
Second, they are split up among three branches, so each has only its own powers and can't run the whole show.
Third, each branch has various impediments to the use of its powers, to slow them and/or require the cooperation of at least one other branch to get things done.
Fourth, each pair of branches has a mechanism to cooperate and throw a money-wrench into the third.
This sounds like the European system is letting a committee force a new law on the component countries of Europe with no way for any collection of elected legislators to stop it, even though they want to.
If so, the system has a bad bug and needs an ECO.
Maybe this showdown will bring it to the attention of those who can do something about it - before somebody figures out an exploit to turn Europe into a dictatorship (and turn the "bug fix" into yet another war, on a par with the WWs or the US Civil War / War Between the States.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Someone would patent the 'method or process' of filing outrageous software patents. I'm sure something prevents stuff like that; too much prior art, I suppose. :p
As an ignorant American, I found this description of the various EU institutions very helpful. Interesting to note that the Parliament can dismiss the Commission if it desires to do so, and it would be interesting to see this happen, or at least have the threat of it issued to enforce Parliament's request/demand.
Anti-EU people take this example to denigrate the integration process, but in fact it shows that MORE integration is necessary.
For instance the parliament still has little power, but without it this directive would have been passed months ago. Without EU at all, it would have been passed years ago under pressure from US-based megacorporations.
I'd say that even though the situation is dangerous, it shows that the European parliament is perfectly doing its job and representing the will of the European people, and counterbalancing the ivory power that is the Commission. In particular, kudos to Michel Rocard, former French Prime Minister and one of the main forces in this legislative fight. A friend of mine met him when he was just starting to discover the issue; and he was pleasantly suprised to find how he listened to anti patent arguments and quickly acquired knowledge and decided to act.
"the role of strong IP as an engine of European growth as part of the Lisbon Agend a is beyond question," said Lueders (from the pro-patent lobby).
I for one will question this.
Perhaps Mr. Lueders can show how one can start up a software company from scratch now in the U.S., without having to worry about a frivolous patent infringement lawsuit? Or without having to sell out a significant stake in your company to Venture Capitalists in order to pay for lawyers (and not developers)?
As mentioned recently on Slashdot, even Bill Gates recognized the stifling effects of Patents on technology back in the early 1990's.
Perhaps Mr. Lueders can show how innovation isn't stifled by this? And perhaps Mr. Lueders can show how innovation isn't stifled by a Patent Holder sitting on a Patent, keeping others from entering the field, and in the meantime absolutely botching the attempt to get the technology propagated. One classic case of this was Digicash back in the late 1990's.
Software Patents stifle innovation. And it is clear that they will put the EU at a disadvantage, beholden to the US companies which currently own most everything.
If the EU wants to have a hope of being able to compete, their only hope is to encourage innovation by Copyright protection, and not stifling development by passing Software Patents.
The European parliament is a fairly untested body as such bodies go (the first direct elections were held in 1979) and it's not clear that voters pay much attention to its election (voter turnout is generally low). Therefore, it was prudent not to transfer too much power to it right away.
The Commission itself is unelected, but it is composed of representatives from democratically elected member governments. That's no different from when a group of foreign ministers get together and hammer out agreements that then get ratified by the national governments. You don't scream bloody murder because your foreign minister represents you internationally, you kind of expect it.
Having said that, I think that the European Parliament is proving itself, while the Commission is demonstrating that it is out of touch, on many issues. So, maybe it is time to shift more power to the parliament. But I understand why things haven't started out that way.
what did Funkadelic have to say about this?
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3244,36- 398497,0.html
Michel Rocard (European deputy) explains (in french) his point of view on the subject and why its being pushed into application.
If this body is not capable of action, I suggest new leadership is needed. I move for a "vote of no confidence"...in the parliament's leadership.
...I know the various contries have been refusing to support the measure...thats good it keeps software patents out of Europe... ...however as OSS supporter do we want the restart? or do we not want the restart? Are we on the side of the commision refusing to restart or the parliment?
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Looks like the term 'Commies' might get a new angle with the power of the allmighty EU commissionaries. .. or at least a 'software method for storage and retrieval of EU software patent documentation'.
OTOH, let them pass the patent laws, then let's patent bureaucracy and get rich
Anybody wants to invest?
Whether it's the WTO, the U.N or the E.U the problem with these international organizations seem to work the same way.
1. Somebody proposes an international organization that will server a higher goal than the interests of member states. For instance, the U.N will be a forum for peace as it has no nationalistic interests. The WTO will enforce free trade rules as it has no nationalistic interests. The EU governments will break down nationalistic barriers.
2. The organization starts working but quickly develops its own interests because it is not an abstract entity but is actually made up of human beings (gasp!).
3. The human beings that make up these international organzations, freed from the direct scrutiny of a more direct democratic process are easily corrupted/bribed/etc. In the case of the U.N this takes the form of the Oil for Food Scandal/ Appointing China, Saudi Arabia and Sudan as the arbiters of human rights/ prostitution scandals in the Congo. Regarding the EU commissions it's these patent directives and other aspects pushed by big business. The common pattern is that there is no accountability. Nobody gets punished for their transgressions because there isn't a disciplinary system in effect and no direct means of applying pressure by the citizenry who are affected by these abuses.
ok call me naive, but given a radical overhaul, could not a workable software patent system be introduced?
e.g. 3 changes:
- reduce the enforcable period from 20years to 6months/1year
- reduce the financial barrier to register a patent (from several thousand euros to maybe a hundred)
- provide a categorised, online resource of software patents which can be easily referenced and challenged by the community (with reference to prior art i.e. cvs commit dates on sourceforge etc.)
That way, we would only have to worry about a small proportion of existing patents affecting distribution of linux, all of which would expire within a year.
An open source developer would then have the choice of registering a patent or not - if she doesn't, she still has a checkin date and knows no one else can patent the idea. (If they do, she can submit prior art without having to go to court).
A commercial developer would make sure any of her main ideas were patented, and would then have a healthy market advantage on her rivals (not enough to ruin a rival's product, but enough to steal a march).
Surely the arguments are not against patents in principle, but against the way the system has been administrated (and is in need of modernisation if to be appropriately applied to software ideas).
Apologies if I'm regurgitating stuff but imho it just seems like an argument more politicians would be prepared to swallow.
No, Europe has a very good system in the respect you describe. As this story and the responses to it illustrates, the EU has several governing bodies with different agendas, who tend to spend their time fighting amongst themselves rather than passing legislation. Further, all the bodies are highly bureaucratic and so even when they agree, it takes them a long time to get anything done.
This is not even the whole story, as the countries in Europe all have their own, elected governments - these governments are the ones that actually have real power, and are at liberty to create their own legislation. Should they not agree with something the European Parliament does, they can stop it happening in their own countries, with the caveat that if they act up enough they might get kicked out of the European free trade/open borders/etc agreements.
Furthermore, Europe has some secondary national parliaments (such as the Scottish Parliament) - they too add extra layers of bureaucracy and possible resistance to stupid legislation, although they are somewhat limited in their powers; e.g. Scotland has it's own justice system but not it's own currency or military.
In summary, we use not only various branches, but also a multi-layer system: rather like if the U.S. State Governments had more power than the Federal Government. Thus a dictatorship is impossible - one country could be a dictatorship, the E.U. could not.
Note, IAmNotAPolitician, I just find them amusing, in my cynical way.
1. Proposing new legislation
Under the Treaty, the Commission has the "right of initiative". In other words, it is responsible for drawing up proposals for new European legislation, which it presents to Parliament and the Council. These proposals must aim to defend the interests of the Union and its citizens, not those of specific countries or industries.
Anyone else than me that found the part about "not those of
I need someone to blame. Who exactly are the bad people involved here? As long as we continue to talk about a nebulous organization, we can exert no pressure. A good article explaining which *people* have made which bad decisions would work wonders.
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
In other news, U.S. President George W. Bush strongly urged the European Union to embrace basic human freedoms by abandoning its current dictatorial regime for a representative form of government.
I hate being right
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Here you go, I made this as an aid for my Model EU course. People should free to freely distribute and use it for noncommercial purposes, if they find it useful.
http://homepage.mac.com/fugu13/decision.pdf
Since stories on slashdot have mentioned a first reading, its going under either the Cooperative or Codecision procedure, almost certainly the Codecision procedure.
The chart was made for people with some knowledge, so I'll fill in some of the things that aren't explained.
The "College" I speak of is the College of Commissioners, the commissioners themselves (sort of like ministers or secretaries of state/education/whatnot).
Consultative and Expert committees are just two types of committees that review and formulate Commission proposals (among other things).
Cabinets are personal cabinets of the Commissioners.
Directorates General are like US Departments (State Department, Education Department), and are not exactly under the authority of the respective Commissioners, but do work with and make information available to them.
Which procedure is used depends on what kind of legislation it is, and is specified in the various EU treaties. Most stuff that goes through nowadays is under Codecision or Consultation, I believe, and Consultation is mostly used in areas where the Council must agree unanimously (note my diagram is a little vague at points as to how much of the Council must agree; this is because the answer is often "it depends").
QMV, or Qualified Majority Vote, is a weighted vote based on country population and such. It is structured such that no two large states can carry the vote, and that a coalition of the smaller states can block any vote.
Absolute majority means that a majority of the people in parliament must vote yes, not merely a majority of those attending.
Unanimity means unanimity, though abstentions are okay, IIRC (and in some cases may mean the country need not implement the policy in question, though I forget the exact application of that bit of arcanity).
While the Commission has the sole power to initiate legislation, the Council of Ministers, Parliament, or European Council may request a proposal on a subject be formulated.
Policy legislation, more general legislation, is what must be approved by the Council or the Council and the Parliament (depending on procedure). This means all the policy legislation gets read by representatives of all the people voting on it, for instance, because its short enough to do that.
Administrative legislation, that required to implement the policy legislation, is enacted by the Commission under the supervision (but not control, exactly) of the Council under a procedure commonly called "comitology" (or the Commission directs member states to implement the policy law, depending on the treaty area). This is not covered by my flow chart, and is even more complex. However, it does ensure a lot of thoughtful consideration of detail law, and makes detail law easier to adapt based on changing situations.
For instance, say there's a bit of policy law saying unemployement rates must be reduced by five percent in the next two years. If the Commission adopts administrative, detail law specifying one method of doing so, and that isn't working, they just adopt new administrative law specifying new methods. The overall policy remains the same, the details of accomplishing it change.
For to end yet again.
...and here I thought LOTR was fairly long for my middle school students' attention spans...
What do you know, the yanks do get irony after all!
It has got nothing to do with further integration. The whole EU needs turning upside down or scrapping. There is no way that unelected bureaucrats should be able to ignore the elected representatives. The whole thing needs rebuilding.
There can be an EU, but the current incarnation is closer to Stalinism than democracy. The council of ministers prove that with their constant denials of reality and their deafness to anyone opposed to their point of view.
All this confusion about patents is a complete mess. Software is not and never has been an invention. It is a written work. You cannot patent any published work - magazines, books, movies or videos. You cannot patent mathematical formulae or methods. Why should software be the only authoured work that you can patent?
did not RTFM but the summery is,
if at first you don't suck-ceed then keep on sucking till you do suck-ceed.
How many times does it has to be said? It makes NO economic sense for europe to allow swp - and that is regardless of the myriad of other reasons why not to allow them, mind you.
Patents are NOT applied to where the invention is made, but where the patent is filed.
Logic dictates, thus, that EU-corporations *CAN* file and 'protect' their IP on the worldmarket: the only thing for that to happen is that they file their patent abroad, in countries where they have been stupid enough to allow them, such as the USA and Japan. But EU companies *are* protected in the EU (when swp remain unvalid) against the typical smothering of big foreign companies with huge portofolios.
In all sense, and even only speaking economically, thus, the EU has a clear economic advantage. WE can sue others, but we can't be sued by others over swp. For the EU as whole, it becomes apparent that this is very beneficial, maybe to the point where other countries will be forced to abandon their swp-mentality too, because otherwise they will be in a inherent disadvantage.
Now, why don't people don't seem to get this? A lot of IP-proponents seem to go the way of 'our IP has to be protected' - ignoring all other valid considerations - but the irony is, even purely focussing on the economics, the EU is better off not having them withion the EU, but still being able to apply them abroad.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
"However, you cannot build and sustain capital investment if you cannot provide a return on said investment. "
We've done extremely well so far!
Are you saying 85% profit margins for MS are not enough incentive to develop software?
Your argument is fine if you develop something that would take 20 years to recoup your costs, but no version of software will be around in 4 years time , let alone 20 years time, so by reality it must be possible to recoup your costs in a much shorter space of time with software.
Software has a relatively low cost to develop, low capital investment, high profit margin (85%+ in the case of MS) and short shelf life.
In addition since there is no need to disclose the algorithm to sell the software, you have a perfect protection mechanism for your magic algo if it truely represents something new. DON'T TELL ANYONE HOW IT WORKS!
"you will never build anything beyond a sub-poverty society."
Again, we've done extremely well so far, software is developing much faster than Pharma, Transport and even PC hardware!
It WOULD be interesting to know what aspect of the European Union Constitution lets a minority like some committee claim the power to ignore the requests of the elected representatives.
Can some sort of intragovernmental lawsuit be filed, to put the greedy ones in their place?
To whom it may concern,
I am outraged at the apalling bias and factual misrepresentation in the BBC article, "EU software patent law faces axe".
First, the bias. The article presents the view of a limited sector of the IT industry with "CompTIA, an umbrella organization for technology companies, said only when intellectual property was adequately protected would European inventors prosper."
They certainly don't represent my technology business!
Where is the view of that other sector of the IT industry: those inventors whose intellectual property is placed in peril by these monopolistic "protections"? And the others: businesses whose work depends on access to open standards and open source infrastructure?
As an inventor myself, I am deeply concerned that my ability to publish my own works will be blocked, should patentability be extended to computer software. The danger to small business such as mine is of being sued to bankruptcy by large institutional firms with large and ever-growing patent portfolios, covering every nuance of technology, even the obvious stuff.
Only large, wealthy firms benefit in such a system: they cross-license with each other to avoid the expense of fighting. Not so for the small and growing enterprise with new ideas. Software patents are hardly good for small inventors: they're a closed club for the big boys.
Secondly, factual misrepresentation. The article says "The open source movement, of which Linux is the flagbearer, eschews notions of property". Wrong, wrong, wrong! The open source movement is absolutely dependent on notions of property and fully aware of this. Almost every piece of software - and even literature, music and science nowadays - produced as open source, makes use of intellectual property law for its protection. It is wrong to paint an unprofessional image of the open source movement, for it includes everyone: individuals, business of all sizes, and governments.
You are right, however, to say that open source "allows anyone to examine and tinker with the inner workings of software." Is there anyone who doesn't believe in the opportunity to learn how things work, if they desire to?
Ironically, the stated official purpose of patents is to ensure everyone has access to the knowledge of how things work, so that anyone can learn to make better things.
It is ironic and frightening to see this getting lost among the backroom bribes, attempts to push dodgy laws through the back door against the wishes of parliament, "patent-acquisition" companies that sue easy targets but don't actually make anything themselves... and journalism parroting the propaganda of "umbrella" organisations that don't represent us.
I'm very glad, however, that the dodgy law didn't get passed through that dodgy back door after all.
Yours faithfully,
Jamie Lokier,
A businessman and inventor whose livelihood depends on the legal right to share his ideas freely.
You'll frequently see ammendements to bills that were defeated in the House and/or Senate become part of the final legislation anyways because the conference committee added it in.
Then in the final vote, you have to either vote to support the final bill and the hundreds of billions of dollars of pork or risk being branded as being "against our troops, our country and our freedom".
Something analogous to this is happening in the EU at the moment. The Commission can't enact the law on its own but it does control what will be voted upon.
In the USA: Corporation pays candidate huge bribes^wcampaign donations. Candidate passes laws for corporations. If public gets bent too out of shape about something, candidate helps pass some half-ass law that won't address the problem and shows the public something shiny to distract them.
In Europe: Unelected and unaccountable organizations bow to elected groups as long as it's in corporate interests and ignore them and do what they want otherwise.
It's hard to say which one is more honest. It would appear that the people are having the wool pulled over their eyes on both sides of the pond...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
to a year or two.
We're clever enough to come up with our own techniques in the short term to compete with closed source companies doing interesting short term things. I'd have no complaint with that level of competition. If a technique is really crucial and unavoidable, we can just wait a couple of years.
It's the medium to long term which is a problem, because we all converge on the same techniques - they are quite fundamental after all - and we need to be able to use our ideas in a reasonable time frame, not 27 years after having them...
A registry of techniques would be nice as a library, but it's not really workable for patent prevention.
Personally I come up with new techniques every day, as I'm sure many people here do. It's not feasible to write them all down, let alone register them in a formally searchable way. That's called "writing a book or article", and it's a lot of work in itself.
Part of the problem is that we've been inventing things at a rapid pace for decades, but most ideas are left unused and not written anywhere until an opportunity when it's _appropriate_ to use them crops up.
In other words, ideas sometimes get patented after lots of people have them, but before anyone actually uses them.
For example, IBM's patent on RCU - that's something I independently came up with when writing a small OS a decade before RCU was mentioned on the Linux lists. But, I didn't have a use for it in that OS (which I deleted all copies of anyway), and I can't prove prior art. I could have "published" it, but frankly publishing every idea like that is more work than it's worth.
I'm sure that has happened with many people here.
(I don't know the filing date of IBM's patent; that example is just to illustrate how potential prior art is easily lost).
If good ideas (of the currently patentable kind) were rare, then a registry would work. But when you're coming up with neat ideas daily, then if there was a registry of "official" prior art, a lot of ideas that people have had and maybe talked about would not have the chance to get in.
So even if there was a registry, we would still have unreasonable problems caused by the patent system.
-- Jamie
"Without protection for IP, including patents, the value of software falls to zero"
Software patent have existing for about 10 years (more or less). So are you saying the economic value of software before 1994 was zero?
I'll assume I don't have to point to the multitude of examples that prove this to be false?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Law making flows like this depending upon what type of law:
Commission -----> Parliament
\___> Council
Basically, ONLY the Commission can PROPOSE bills, only they can come up with bills. Then Parliament AND/OR Council can only say yes or no. But they are not allowed to write anything other than approve or disapprove.
So for those who understands U.S. Civics 101, the translation is that:
-- The Commission, Parliament, and Council all have some degree of legislative powers (in the U.S. legistlative sense), one giant legislative body divided in to three parts.
-- The Commission is like the congressional committies in the U.S. that discuss the nit-pick details that make the bill.
-- Then depending on the bill (see below) to be made to law, the Council is like the Senate, and the Parliament is like the House of Representatives.
There are three types of "bills", and they are categorized by the procedure needed to pass them:
A.) Codecision
B.) Consultation
and
C.) Assent
A lot of things falls under codecision, and if that is the case, the Parliament and the Council works just like the U.S. House and Senate respectively (Or Lower House, Upper House). However, if it is a bill that only requires the consultation procedure, then only the Council needs to approve. The Parliament just "recommends" things to it. If a bill requires assent, then it is inversed, the Parliament approves, and the Council recommends.
Most things requires codecision, but it seems most codecision things are things like:
--preventing and combating fraud
--education
--equal opportunities and equal treatment
The things that we, the people, would care about is made the most difficult to pass (requiring both Council and Parliament).
While most decisions requiring consultation are things related to government things, like:
-- Police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters
-- Revision of the Treaties
-- Tax arrangements
And the Council is like the Senate, one rep. per nation. Relatively easy to pass.
While things requiring assent deal mainly with money, membership, and bickering procedures:
-- specific tasks of the European Central Bank
-- the uniform electoral procedure for the European Parliament
-- the accession of new member states
IMHO, the system is messed up. Not only does the Commission come up with the law, they are the ones that enforce it. Does anyone see too much power in the Commission?
Proposes legislation AND implementing decisions!? That sounds like legislative AND executive power. Someone must have failed Republics Civics 101 or have been in the Socialist Party-Government class for too long.
The Parliament only has the power to dismiss the Commission. That is not much, because they either dismiss a rebellious Commission and risk to paralyize the EU; or they let the Commission run with the Commission trampling on the people's rights and the Parliament's own power.
Furthermore, the Courts is almost nowhere in the picture. I have no more to say than this, the seperation of powers are all wrong.
From TFA, Hugo Leuders of pro-patent CompTIA said:
Seems to me that he's obscuring the fact that "imitation and copying" is an important part of most innovation. We'd never be where we are without it.
Either you would have to wait a year or two until you actually get out your software, or your will have to search all patents to see it any ideas you have used in your software have been patented. The latter will likely cost you more than actually developing your software.
In any case innovation would be set back compared to the current european situation where software patents are illegal.
Your idea of a register of prior art is fine, but there is a risk that the patent offices will begin searching only that register. Currently they are obliged to search all public sources.
This bureaucratic nightmare also shows once more why the new Constitutional Treaty must be adopted as soon as possibile. It will streamline the european legislative process and institutions, and give more power to the European Parliament.m
The consitution, signed on october 2004, must be ratified by all the 25 states in order to be valid. So far, IIRC, only four states did it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3954327.st
An oft-overlooked point in the software patents debate is that the purpose of patents is NOT to provide government-mandated monopolies to certain corporations. The true purpose is to *encourage innovation* so that society can benefit--and this innovation is already occurring at a breakneck pace in the tech industry.
A patent granting one company a 17-YEAR MONOPOLY on an idea is simply a roadblock they can use to lock competitors out of a market. It doesn't benefit society at all, and in fact it interferes with proper competition (see: Microsoft) and is actively harmful to society's interests.
In software, more than in any other industry I'm aware of, you build something out of ideas and concepts and libraries that others have already built. Nobody writes "new" software completely from scratch. Allowing people to patent software WILL interfere with innovation, and it will put the EU at a huge disadvantage because of American corporations (see: Microsoft) that already have a head start and have thousands of these bogus, vile patents.
"Hence it could be argued that the BSD license benfits freeloaders, while the GPL benefits the community as a whole, something that would not be possible without the protection of copyright."
Perhaps, but what the poster was aluding at (correctly, me thinks) is that, if no IP laws would exist, the GPL wouldn't need to be there in the first place.
It doesn't *need* protection by means of copyright, if copyright doesn't exist and can't be enforced; because the goal of free use would be served by the fact IP-laws don't exist. It is *because* copyright exists and can restrict the liberties of others, that the GPL has any use.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
There is no practical difference between a written book or short story and a piece of code. Both take someone with at least some sort of minimal skills and on up from that point to sit down and type up various things in an unique sequence in some arbitrary language. And that's it. If a dozen people write the code it could become a big program, if a dozen people all write and collaborate on a project it could become a magazine instead of a novel, in other words, big hairy deal. If you accept software patents it should follow then you should accept patenting novels or magazines, and I think you'd find it hard to find many people who thought that wise.
Civilization and "creative progress" existed for millenia before this scam of patenting software itself got invented, and that's all it is is a paperwork razzle dazzle shuffle scam. It happened during the rough time span when the financial phony products "industry" grifters were running out of other paper product snake oil scams to milk people out of their cash for. Been an expensive elaborate joke and skim and put the con on consumers ever since.
All this valuable "software patenting" stuff creates so called "patented products" that don't even have a normal consumer warranty with them, another *obvious* scam and rip off, and you have no right to resell, dissasemble, zip, like you would if you bought an honest tangible patented product, acme vacuum cleaner for instance. I don't need to sign a "license" to resell my vacuum cleaner at a yard sale,or repay the same fee yearly. I don't need to worry about "violating the law" if I take a screw driver to it, I don't need a "license to vacuum", I am not forced to destroy the vacuum rather than reselling it. But, "patented software" all that applies to conversationally speaking. Sorry, you may have the slickest program in the world, but the second there's a patent attached to it it becomes part of an elaborate fraudulent congame.
Copyright-acceptable more or less, but patent? HAHAHAHA!
As to those middle man skimmers with their "capital", they existed for millenia also, the planet has always been infested with moneychangers, so be it, they'll find a way to weasel their way into some other easy money con without software being patented. -> "the hedged derivative shortly to the longwise reverse floating point waved bond share of your perpetual debt note" or some ridiculous babbling noise like that. Software patents are a variant on that scam, nothing more. The software can be good bad or mediocre quality, that ain't the point, the point is the patent part is a middleman skim dodge. Easy to see, too. Those black suited grifters have amazing imaginations when it comes to getting out of their own productive work and using someone else's, so don't you worry none about them, in china or any place else, coming up with some way to "profit", they'll think up a few dozen more ways before noon if you take software patents back away from them at 8 am.
Yes, I agree that no software patents are best. and I wholeheartedly want them out of the EU. See my other recent post on the subject.
(We have them here in the EU already, they're just illegal right now, but that doesn't eliminate the sense of ambiguity. Even though I write pure software, I am not sure of my risk in publishing it because it is highly technical software which definitely does things mentioned in EU patents).
I meant that reducing the term in the USA from decades to 2 years would be the single most effective thing from the parent's list for the USA apart from discarding software patents completely, and that the other things the parent poster suggested would not help.
That's not my idea, that's the parent poster's idea. I agree with you, that a registry is a bad idea precisely because it cannot ever reflect the true prior art.
I take that argument further: there is a lot of prior invention that has never been published even though it has been thought of and tried privately. So even searching public sources does not really give a fair representation of what other people are thinking up.
(And even if it did, I believe it is still wrong to prohibit people from sharing work they have done themselves, even if they are not the first to do it).
-- Jamie
Yes, but the council of ministers consists of ministers of the member states, so it is (indirectly) elected. It's the commission that has too much power IMO, they should be responsible to the Parliament for things to work right.
I thought Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister were documentaries.
Infuriate left and right
Thanks for the comments.
;)
I take the point about there being plenty of ideas for which there is no prior art (because ideas weren't implemented) and I agree that reducing the term for US patents would have the single biggest impact.
I didn't strictly mean a register of prior art - I actually meant an online resource for searching both active and expired patents - prior art would just be submitted in order to challenge patents (rather optimistically requiring the patent examiner to revisit patents with reference to the prior art and deactivate them - either that, or having some sort of trial period before a patent is approved when prior art can be submitted).
Anyways... none of that is ever gonna happen
Dan.
the Gnu Public License, under which much of today's open source software, including Linux, is released, depends fundamentally on the protections and rights granted by copyright.
You omit to mention that it depends on copyright only as a defense against copyright itself. (and in the case of the source-disclosure clause, against a direct side-effect of copyright) It almost looks like you are trying to deliberately mislead.
A better response might have been to say that the Free Software movement just doesn't accept "intellectual property" as being property, and it is they who do most of the forward thinking on behalf of those going under the Open Source moniker.
You cannot have different terms for different fields of technology. As has been mentioned this goes against TRIPS agreements. However there is a more practical reason. You can't always identify clearly which field of technology a patent applies to. They don't all start "A software patent comprising..." and in fact patent attorneys go out of their way to obfuscate such things.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
That the EU is currently setup as a "good cop, bad cop" government? [shudder]
PLEASE, stop confusing copyright law with patent law! It's such a common confusion that it's starting to get boring.
Take a book as an example. It's text is wide available (code), it tells a story (ideas). You could write another book with a similar story (ideas), not using the same text.
If you write a piece of software, you still own your work, and you can restrict others from copying it (copyright). People who choose to GPL their works aren't giving up their rights on what they wrote, they're just extending those rights to others, but under certain conditions (the gpl license). There are hundreds of licenses, GPL is just one of them.
Think of how stupid it would be if you could patent books, and noone could write about the same things? No more debate of ideas, no evolution, no innovationWell, software patents aren't any better.
We've been doing just fine with copyright law, it works. Let's leave it at that.
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
And I use a stapler from 20 years ago, but I'm pretty sure they made the money from their design of that stapler a long time ago.
Remember its not how long stuff lasts, its how long it takes to recoup the development costs and really not even that, its how long it takes to recoup the development costs of the *novel* *Invention* part of the thing your making.
So in the case of one click online ordering, that took perhaps a hour to scribble on the back of a napkin over lunch, how long does it take to cover the cost of that hour 'inventing'?