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."
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.
no because the GPL'ed software is copyrighted not patented. Not the same thing.
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
No, because the open source code is still copyrighted. (Patents != Copyright). Patents are more general than copyrights, pplying to ideas rather than realisations (and, please, IANAL - someone speak up if I've missed out/messed up).
What patents bring to the table is the ability for someone to patent a concept (one-click purchasing, say) and then prevent anyone else from implementing something similar.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Patents are not what protects GPLed code copyright is.
Just because it isn't patented, doesn't mean that copyright protection goes away. In fact as things stand right now almost no GPL code in existance uses patented algorithms.
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
You are confusing patents with copyright.
The GPL conveys a concept for usage rights and copyright terms.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
...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.
No, that violates the copyright. If you take unpatented GPL code and learn a method from it and reimplement it yourself in a completely different way, that's fine. You have to be careful that your code is not even similar to the original GPL code, as that counts as a derivative work, but implementation of an idea is not protected by copyright - only by a patent.
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
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.
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
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.
The EU is not a government.
It's primarily a trading body, but has pretentions to be more than that.
The EU Commission is appointed by the individual member states, so whilst we can't vote for them directly we can kick out the morons who put them there.
The EU Parliament is directly elected, but has little actual power - there are too many vested interests to ever give it any real power... it makes decisions over minor matters.
The European Court is the bit that keeps the countries in line with their treaty obligations... they actually have the power to force governments to change their laws (the UK is often being slapped down these days because of its draconian 'anti-terrorist' laws like imprisonment without trial... we have out own camp X-Ray called Belmarsh, and the EU Court has basically ordered the government to close it).
There's another one I think (I thought there were 4 parts to the EU... might be wrong).
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.
Poland is not insignificant.
And it's a damned good thing they did push the vote that way IMO. Nobody wants or needs this law. Everything is fine just as it is now, but there's a push by large US software companies to try to break our system just like theirs.
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.
Making a 'commercial product' out of something GPL-licensed doesn't 'negate' the GPL in any way.
The GPL does not make any distinction between 'commercial' or 'non-commercial' distribution. Any and all distribution must follow the terms of the GPL. Commercial or not doesn't enter the picture.
Don't you know there are commercial linux distributions out there?
And patents and copyrights are completely different forms of protection. You can't patent music. But that doesn't mean it isn't protected by copyright.
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.
Here in Denmark, for example, the government is appointed by our Queen. Our queen is the only danish citizen that is not allowed to have a political opinion (at least not publicly), so she is supposed to select the government that is best for Denmark, regardless of politics. Our democratically elected parliament can at any time sack our government with a simple majority vote. The result is that the government our queen appoints has the best possible backing from our parliament.
But there is another problems with the government in Denmark and most (all?) other european countries: Although the government risk being sacked by the parliament, they are not bound by decisions of the parliament on questions of EU policy.
This is why we have this strange situation in Europe where most national parliaments are against software patents, while the EU Council (really the club of governments of the EU countries) is pushing for legalization of software patents.
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.
It's actually even more complicated than that. There are two different "European courts":
It's the former which has ruled on the UK's detention of prisoners without trial.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
You're confusing two issues: how your national government is brought into power and how that reflects on the European Commission.
You have a system by which you get a government and, for better or for worse, that government represents you. One of the things that government does is represent your interests in international bodies, including the EU. If you aren't happy with the way you get your government, that's a national problem. You could guillotine your queen and have a revolution, for example. However, most people do actually consider Denmark a democracy. Furthermore, I suspect your government would actually be free to ask the people and hold a referendum on its Commissioners.
If your government isn't acting the way your parliament wants it to, it sounds like your parliament has the option of dissolving it (I don't know how Danish government works), but apparently it doesn't care enough about this issue to take that step. That's not unusual, and it's by design: democracy does not mean that the majority, or even the majority of representatives, gets their will on every issue. It's similar in the US, where the Senate and the House are two separate bodies that control each other, and the executive branch has a lot of separate powers, and they aren't all always consistent with each other.
Historically, the Commission makes sense; giving lots of power to the European Parliament overnight would have been insane since people had no idea of how the politics would work out, while the Commission grew out of the mechanisms all member states were already using for interacting. Again, I don't like many of the decisions the Commission has been making, and it sounds like it's time to give more power to the European Parliament. But the fact that things are the way they are isn't the result of some insane European bureaucracy or anti-democratic movement, it's the prudent and natural way to achieve what the European Union is trying to achieve. European Parliament could easily have turned out to be a bunch of anti-democratic hoodlums and kooks, in which case we'd all be grateful that we didn't hand over power over our lives to them.
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!
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.
I do not want to guillotine our queen and have a president instead, as I prefer a non-political head of State over a president.
But I would prefer if decisions by our parliament would be binding to our government. If that was the case for all EU governments, the software patent directive would have been dead now. (And Denmark would not (for the first time since 1864) have gone to war (against Iraq), since there was a massive majority against it in our parliament. In the US at least the Congress has to approve going to war.)
I agree on your statements on the European Parliament, and I think it is time to give them more power.
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
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.
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.
I thought Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister were documentaries.
Infuriate left and right