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European Parliament Rejects Software Patents
heretic9 writes "The European Parliament unanimously rejected the software patent bill recently put before it. Hugo Lueders of CompTIA, a pro-patent lobby group, said that the benefits of the bill had been obscured by special interest groups, which muddied debate about the rights and wrongs of software patents." Meaning, essentially, that the Conference of Presidents got its way.
According to Michel Rocard (former France Prime Minister, now European Deputy), companies like US Majors (Microsoft & Co), Nokia or Alcatel exerted pressure on european commission to have a second look at the pattent issue. In this interview (French) Michel Rocard says that the expert group that was supposed to help the commission, was in fact formed by Microsoft and other IT companies.
Rocard said : "We never could have talked a common language with the companies representatives we met - in particular those from Microsoft. Speaking about free ideas circulation, free access to knowledge, was like speaking chinese to them. In their way of thinking, everything that is not usable for immediate profit cease to be a growth vector. They don't seem to be able to understand that an invention which is a pure spirit creation can't be pattented. It's simply terrifying. Many of us, at the Parliament, agree to say that they never have know such a pressure and such a verbal violence during their parliamentary work. It is a huge case."
18 may 2004, Commission presents a new text even more liberal than the first one, and try to impose it during Agriculture Minister Concil, which primary objective was FISHING. Thanks to Poland interventions, the vote is avoided.
"Concerning France, no word from it. Jacques Chirac claimed himself against extensive software pattenting during his presidential campaing. But the current industry minister, Patrick Devedjian said nothing against the text."
I'm all for limiting how and what can be patented in software as, at least in the U.S., to many suits and abuses have come from people trying to collect money on just a few lines of code anyone can easily come up with when they think (read one-click purchasing).
But if someone does come up with something truly unique that is expressed in software, how can this be legally protected so someone else doesn't steal your work after one or one-half year?
Perhaps there should be no software patents at all, just some sort of legal copyright protection for 5 years or so. But how is that uniqueness defined anyway? At what point does a subsection of code become unique enough to be protected?
As me ol' chums would say, this truly is a sticky wicket!