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Software Patents Affecting Futures Exchanges
KontinMonet writes "The Financial Times reports European exchanges, brokers and traders are preparing for possible legal battles with Trading Technologies, a US software company. The situation is being made harder for potential defendants because the cases so far have all been sealed. No doubt, all those IP lawyers think this is a good thing..."
What would be a reason to seal these documents? I mean, what reason would the court accept to do that? I thought all court documents had to be public (IANAL, obviously ;).
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My Belgian company (which spent a couple of years developing a very sophisticated SMS product) got a phone call and then an email from some guy who has a US patent on a very broad and shallow aspect of our work. His claim: you are totally infringing, stop selling your product and sell mine. My answer: since when does a US patent apply in Belgium? Him: Ah, in about... (checks watch) 18 months.
My point being: I've asked the EPO several times in the past whether I could patent aspects of our company's software R&D, they have always rejected this out of hand. I know that they have allowed software patents anyhow, if described sufficiently bizarrely.
But if a flood of US software patents hits the European market it will have the effect of killing the European technology business almost overnight.
We have, so to speak, no immunity.
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Im not trolling or anything, but how about we Europeans just ignore everything the US says law wise, treat their patents as null and void, and basically tell companies they can either trade with us or have a nice cup of STFU and we, and the rest of the world will live happily ever after.
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Well, half... they don't really work.
/. can find prior art to help make the US invasion a little less easy for them (by US I mean just the nasty patent stuff! keep exporting your fast food and k3wl choons!) hahah just kidding, we are one big happy family here on /.
Dyson patented his cyclone technology for his vacuum invention. good.
He almost ran out of money twice when hoover copied him twice and deliberately tried to cut off his balls twice
(how do I real-life killfile hoover? mmm, a pda app that does company holdings lookups on bar code scans and warns you why you dont want to support them.... mmmmmmmmm nice)... hoover have thier money in a lot of pots. It'd be nice to steer clear of them. en-masse.
Not that I am domestically inclined, but <s>hoovering</s> vacuuming (cycloning?) is one thing I am for, and I regularly clean my motherboard this way (oh... and my room) anyway, not to stray too far off topic... Dyson was a case for and against patents.
A hoover patent for belly button fluff could never be contested by anyone = hoover because of money.
If patents were granted in a sane way, instead of just making shit loads of money, then people could use them to defend against bigger corps, and bgger corps couldn't shovel sandbag patents around thier corner of a market.
Also, a patent should be registered with a timelimit to make a move on it. to stop this company who is trying to sue dell for 'selling overseas on the internet' which is a premise (or a method, solution or something) that they developed.
Microsoft have given up on being a monopoly, they are letting the USPTO do it for them. And some lawyers with girly pony tails (Yes Schwartz, I said girly)
So while I see Dyson as a mixed case, I think software patents will never ever come to the aid of a little guy.
The problem is, are they really going to be steam rollered in? Isn't there some kind of pan-european IT union? Should there be?
Has the BCS (brit.comp.soc) done anything? doubt it.
Give some details on this guys patent, maybe
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Hey, come on...as a law student who hates this as much as anyone here, that's just not fair.
Granted, it seems like there are plenty of lawyers willing to push for and litigate harsh copyright/trademark/(software )patent laws, but I don't actually know where they learn it. In colleges and unis, the IP professor/lawyers who are for expansive laws are few and far between. And in the 'wild,' the concentration appears higher than it is because, the software/entertainment pro-copyright-till-we-choke lawyers are the only ones who have control of the microphone (why do you think that is?).
Anyways, I have yet to meet a professor that supports the things we all complain about. In fact, I know such lawyers exist only looking at the amici briefs files for, say, Grokster. Most are shades of Lessig. And if they're having any effect, I guess I just don't see how there won't be floods of actual lawyers pouring out of the schools who advocate erring on the side of restrained law rather than expansive law.
Extortion is a threat against property or persons unless paid off.
Threatening to worsen the terms of a license to GUI software patents if it isn't accepted is neither. It is, however, criminally stupid in the present Euorpean patent law environment.
At least now the EU can see the DAMAGING effect of Software Patents. Patents make the EU more competitive? Give me a break...
I just checked for countries subscribing to the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
http://www.angenehm.com/pat_faqs3.html
The priority date (the date from which your patent is taken to have been submitted) is taken as the first submission to any patent office in any country in which you applied.
So it looks like Belgian's guys problem above would apply. His USA counterpart would come in and apply for a patent quoting a prior USA patent priority date.
He's then forced to try to show prior art in a world where prior software art isn't disclosed. So there's probably plenty of prior art, but can he get the companies to release their code to prove it?!
it's a letter that reasons why the following would be true: "The solution that TT has offered to each of the 'big four' exchanges is as follows:
TT and the participating exchange (PE) would guarantee each other level access, permanently.
Inside the world of PE futures and future options (this includes traders, customers, FCMs, ISVs, exchanges, etc.), TT would forfeit the right to be the aggressor in any patent infringement lawsuit, permanently; in that way allowing absolutely anyone to use TT's current and future patent protected concepts any way they desire.
TT would receive from PE 2.5 cents per side for every PE future and future option transaction, permanently."
then they go on rambling abou "competition, competition, competition", apparently it's just for eveyone else since they want permanently 2.5c on any transaction made(with no way to end the agreement). basically tt could just sit on their asses after that and keep receiving money to the end of the world even when their patents expire! the letter is also full of stuff that you would expect to find from a 419 letter(using capitals in wrong place, yes i know the irony in that i don't usually bother with them myself, also they ramble a fair amount on how the 'customers' would benefit from this 2.5c agreement, make zillions with their magic technology and so forth).
amazing that they got such advanced tech.. yet need to protect it with sealed court procediings(if it's so much out there that they need go around suing people, do they really have something unique?).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I should add that I'm not saying that this necessarily is blackmail. That would depend on whether the demand was unwarranted which in turn would depend on whether "he has reasonable grounds for making the demand" and whether "the use of menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand". I suspect TT would claim to satisfy both of these conditions. However, blackmail at least in the UK is not limited to a "threat to expose embarrasing information unless paid off".
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
75% of already granted European software patents are owned by US and Japanese companies. European companies have only something like 20% of all granted software patents.
US companies also patent processes implemented in software (to buy something with one click of a mouse, to load certain kinds of XML information, ...), and not individual computer programs.
A very nice report was published recently by the European Parliament's Directorate General on Economic and Social Policy, which completely debunks the "computer-implemented inventions are entirely different things that software", and which confirms that the European Patent Office's practice is not all that different from US practice.
The report is linked at the bottom of this PR.
Compressing an image is generally plain maths, and "mathematical processes" are not (should not be) patentable in Europe. Of course, the EPO (with the help of enterprising lawyers appealing to its Technical Board of Appeals) has found ways to interpret the European Patent Convention to get around this. I'm also not sure how you can say in general that "searching" is patentable.
I'd be very interested in seeing any numbers you have on this. Also, whether or not we have software patents in Europe is completely independent of those companies' abilities to get software patents in the US.
Patents are not about fairness, patents are economic means which can be used to correct an economic system running haywire due to relentless imitation. You do not introduce artificial monopolies in an economic sector because it's "fair".
You might want to look at this presentation by a lawyer and law scholar specialised in software patents on that. Trying to paint it as a "communists vs capitalists" is sooooo last 5 years (although Bill Gates doesn't seem to know that yet either).
Even if you unconditionally believe that any sort of intellectual creation should be associated with the broadest possible form of property rights, there's still the problem that software patents conflict with the property rights of software authors, granted to them by copyright. They prevent the normal exploitation of their works, which is even in conflict with the often cited TRIPs agreement.
Again, this has nothing to do with rewards, respect for work or whatever. It's
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The real issue of substance is whether TT really has a case, not in US law, but under EU law. We simply don't know this until someone challenges them. TT have been very clever in pitching their cost per trade metric well below the pain threshold, so it's cheaper to pay TT then take it to court. As its not challenged, there are no papers to make public, and TT can request as part of the agreement that the agreement terms and conditions are confidential.
There is a much larger issue at stake, as this thread points out. Whether ideas can be patented, and just what legal regime a patent in the US for an idea would be fought under when EU doesn't (yet) recognise the patenting of ideas.
The problem with support always existed, even back to the time of VMS. They needed to keep all platforms on as narrow a release and patch range as possible.
See my journal, I write things there
This looks like TT staked a claim on a process that would have been obvious to someone reasonably skilled in the area of electronic trading. Its a good thing for TT that theres nothing in patent regulations that prevents this.
As for speed, that was variable. Many packets in former times would just be lost and nobody would be wiser. When it worked it was fast, but hey, no error checking! Someone explained that it was like being a dwarf in the T-bills pit in Chicago. You could hollar but nobody could hear you.
All the exchanges provide APIs directly. Some don't even give any trading interface although Eurex does and it is fairly good too.
Incidently, if you want the best speed on a market like Eurex, be close to the exchange. It costs a lot of time to go under the pond.
See my journal, I write things there
> In that case, if you are against software patents, then you must be against any type of patents because it would not be fair to have a special exemption for one type of invention and not another.
...
Steady there, cowboy
The big difference with 'hardware' patents
(including, say, pharmaceutical patents) is the
utter disproportion of the protection offered by a
patent in the software case. Pharmaceuticals
by now cost hundreds of millions to develop, and
this has to be recouped in a very short time.
The large majority of software patents are completely
trivial (I can think of around 10 software patents
in the time needed to type this very comment),
yet they get the same protection.
How can this be beneficial to the advancement of
the state of the art? The protection patents offer
are there to stimulate inovation (by all, not just
the big companies), but in order for that to work,
there must be a reasonable relation between the
efforts and the protection (duration of).
Since you are an IP lawyer in favor of public dispensation of justice, and are currently providing services to many "small and individual inventors", I am quite curious how these individuals have fared with you as their champion.
:)
Could you provide an example or two of an individual successfully defending a patent against a corporation with much deeper pockets?
See http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/The-Fuzzy-Softwa re-Patent-Debate-Rages-On-40676.html
"Look Beyond the Rhetoric
Leaders of the open-source software movement have long been harsh critics of software patents. The GPL itself says, "any free program is threatened constantly by software patents." The appeal contends that copyright provides adequate protection for the creations of software authors. The Appeal advocated reliance on copyright law, rather than patent law, for the protection of software.
Not long afterward, in late January, the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee recommended scrapping the pending directive, extending the debate until at least the end of the year. There may ultimately be an EU software directive that affects the scope of software patenting in Europe, but not any time soon.
Once upon a time, we intellectual property lawyers got to live peacefully in our ivory towers. Those were the good old days. Now it seems that intellectual property policy issues have become fraught with partisan rhetoric. Most open-source promoters are against software patents. Most corporate spokesmen side with patents, period, whether they cover software or not. But it is worth looking beyond the rhetoric.
Copyright is an odd champion for the side of light. It would be neither original nor controversial to observe that copyright is an awkward scheme to protect computer software. At best, it is a square peg in a round hole. Before you take up the crusade of copyright, remember what it covers. Copying -- sounds like something you do to a book. Public performance -- sounds like a play or a film, right? Derivative works -- that sounds like an album by Vanilla Ice. This should be no surprise: The copyright law was written to cover books and music and plays and films.
Protecting Expression
Copyright protects expression, not ideas. But software is not really all that expressive. When was the last time you went to a poetry reading and heard someone reciting C++? ("Wow, that recursive reference in his data structure was so deliciously ironic!") More important, software does not derive its value from expression; it derives its value from function. The fact that most software companies can get away with distributing software in object code form proves this point.
Code may be as elegant as a Chanel suit, but most people don't care. They want products to work, and they want software that makes them work. Users not only don't care how elegant code is, they actively don't want to know. I love my TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO) and I love my PDA -- not because they contain lovely code, but because I will never have to see what code is in them. I know in my heart that I am not alone.
This makes protection of software via copyright tricky, because functional elements or ideas are not protected -- only expression. Not surprisingly, actually identifying software copyright infringement is like reading tea leaves. It's straightforward, of course, when someone wholesale copies a piece of software. This catches up the shameless counterfeiters. But people using software to develop products rarely copy software without modification.
If they re-write code, they can come up with a very different looking set of expression that performs the same function. Have they infringed the copyright? That is not so straightforward. The serious copyright battles are over the copying of bits and pieces, structures, design elements and so forth -- and applying copyright law to those cases is difficult, expensive and unpredictable.
Leave It to Lawyers
Unless you are a copyright lawyer, you probably don't know that the rule for assessing infringement in several U.S. judiciary circuits is the "abstraction, filtration, comparison" test. The court will "first break down the allegedly infringed program into its constituent structural parts. Then, by examining each of these parts for such things as incorporated ideas, expression that is necessarily incidental to those idea
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