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EU Patents Won't Stay Dead
sconeu writes "Apparently the EC is ignoring the restart directive, and has placed software patents as an A-Item on the Council of Minister's agenda with an aim for approval on Monday." From the article: "The directive is pitched as offering greater protection for software developers. Opponents, including many in the European parliament, fear it will simply provide big players, including America's powerful and litigious software giants, with a very large stick to batter upstart developers and the Open Source movement." Update: 03/04 22:04 GMT by Z : And just as quick as you please Denmark stops things in their tracks. Denmark's objection means that there will have to be further debate before the patents get the stamp.
Is it just me or does it sound like Microsoft and other litigious American software giants has bought the influence of this European commission? I can only hope that the many countries involved will stand up and fight to at least hold debate on a matter that might ruin most small and mid sized European software companies.
Its not users who are broken, it's systems not taking account their likely behaviour and fixing it technically.
There is nothing wrong with patents per se, but rather the *reasons* why they are being called for.
The European computer patent measure seems to be aimed at stifling competition rather than encourage innovation - that is why it's not a good idea.
Unfortunate, the US patent system has the idea right but it's been misused into oblivion (with wonderful contributions from those granting patents, too) - but it was never created for the reasons that the European Computer Implemented Inventions Directive is being created for.
Damn unfortunate.
Why do Europeans allow a non-elected commission to determine economic policy? It makes no sense to me that a state would agree to hand out such important matters that, in my mind anyhow, require representation to do. Personally, I don't give crap about software patents, I'm more amazed the EU is run like this.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Sure, software patents protect small developers. That's why Carmack's Reverse is patented by 3DLabs (who John Carmack doesn't work for, and received royalties from Doom 3 sales), one-click ordering is patented by one of the online auction giants, and is why we're seeing elements of standard computing operations being patented on a weekly basis.
How does the patenting of the components and standard processes of computing protect the small developers if the small developers are no longer allowed to freely develop?
I suspect it's a matter of who has greater willpower, very much like the periodic brawls in the US between the White House and Congress. The Parliament can (and should) reject it, and keep rejecting it every time the EC kicks it back to them, but will they have the political will to do so? Cf. "Social Security" and "judicial appointments."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Apparently, the Danes have stepped up to kill this one! http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic. php?t=428
:wq
I'm not up on my EU procedures. Assuming it is approved by the ministers, does it still need Parliamentary approval? If so, and assuming it receives such, is there some type of court to which an appeal can be brought? Does the EU have any type of Judicial redress?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
According to this article in the German IT magazine Heise.de (use the fish), the danish parliament has giving their minister for economy, Bendt Bendtsen, binding orders to request a complete restart of the whole negotiations.
The parliament of the Netherlands have giving their representative orders to support any demands for new negotiations.
Finally, the German representative would face sever pressure (he'd probably have to resign) should he ignore the German parliants demands for new negotiations.
As for many of the "new" EU members, they will probably not support a decision that might severly restrict their fledgeling IT economy - no matter how much Microsoft and the other "big players" try to lobby.
So, all in all, its as good as dead - at least for now.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Today, the danish comission of European affairs ORDERED their governement to not treat the new software patent directive as a "done deal".
The Dutch governement had earlier said it was hoping on a redraft opf the bill, but would not block the vote, something the German Governement had also done.
In the meantime the Dutch VVD also brought in a motion to try to get an amendment to bring "community patents into the bill, which then would have to be completely redrafted.
Source: www.webwereld.nl
I dont know about you folks, but I'm thinking: "It ain't over 'till the Fat Lady sings"
And I somewhat like the idea of a commons of patents.
developments: Computerised inventions: the Commission refuses to budge
As heise reports, the Danish parliament has bindingly instructed their secretary of commerce to vote AGAINST software patents,
so the law can't be nodded through.
According to their parliaments some other ministers are instructed (more or less bindingly) to support another country's approach to restart the whole process:
Poland, Netherlands, Spain (had already voted against it in the last session), maybe Germany (but represented by some stubbor a..hat, so..)
Also it is likely that some countries that were neutral during the last voting (like Austria, Belgium, Italy) will support a complete restart.
If you look here: http://ffii.org/ there's some possibly better news.
IMHO, this is the effect the general political disinterest the population has here in the EU. It may be stronger than in the US, but it' still declining.
And it is now SO LOW that corruption rises steeply. This is corruption, isn't it? Not calling it corruption would euphemise it.
Maybe, people still care a bit about what the media say. The media don't say anything about 'smaller political issues', only the important ones.
But the media also decide what "important issues" are. For example they redefine that corruption is about privately using frequent-flyer-miles (not ok, of course, but corruption?), about contacts of politicians into red-light districts (wtf?!)
They let politicians talk about "high-tech", "information economy" etc.pp. But if important laws are proposed in this area, they do not notice or they do not want to notice.
If the Minister for Economic Affairs overrides decisions of the cartel office for apparently no good reason (as it happened here in germany), it's pictured as "saving the economy". Arrrrrrgh!
If they push this through, "we" should not stop trying to prevent software patents. We should lobby for the abolition of software patents then. But this will be hard.
Sometimes, I have the vision for 2020-2030 of some grey-haired FLOSS developers drinking tea together and being nostalgic about the wild times where software development wasn't illegal and fundamental rights were still respected.
But I can not, in any way, accept such a development.
The French revolution. Those in power repeatedly ignore the cries of the people and defile common sense with their governmental decisions. The rich live their lives in naive luxury while those outside their homes are starving. Finally the straw that breaks the camel's back will fall, and the people will rise to usurp their so-called "leaders". Chaos will soon follow, and the rage, blood, and death will spread across the countryside like wild-fire...
Anything and everything just seems to be getting more and more messed up in the world of politics today. My only question is what will be the 21st century equivalent of the guillotine? Laser guns? Oh please, please let it be laser guns!!! =D
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
The members of the commission.
Since telling it nicely doesn't work, and telling it with lots of money is out of the question, we should find other ways to uhm...convince them. The first step is to peel them out of this anonymus term "European Commission", so they can't hide in it.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
But those over 30000 illegally issued software patents give us an idea of the future.
They include basic user interface widgets like tabs (EP689133).
FFII has a list of the last 100 software patents they found.
Another interesting tidbit from the article:
I sent email via faxyourmp to my EU members of parliament, one UK independence party (hates the EU entirely, along with anything foreign), and the Liberal Democrats
I havent heard anything back from UKIP, which surprises me -I thought they'd be "the EU is evil, here is why".
The lib dem MP gave some patronising guff about technical innovation and "balancing the needs of large enterprises and small businesses", nothing about consumers, OSS developers, etc.
But he did say they had voted to send it back, and were miffed at the response. They werent letting it lie, as it was a sign of a broader power struggle between governments (council of ministers) and the EU parliament itself.
I find it interesting that there is an ongoing suggestion that only big money firms are innovators and that small companies and open source concerns are just copiers. Such willful ignorance is staggering.
You have any doubt? Let us look at Microsoft then as they are the biggest and surely the "most innovative." Which world famous products of theirs have shown them to be the great innovators that all else copy?
MS-DOS? A clone of existing operating systems. They took someone else's idea, made their own implementation, and profited.
Their greatest triumph? Windows OS. So can we assume Microsoft created the first graphical operating system? The first window based operating system? The first point-and-click, mouse navigated operating system? No, no and no. In all three cases they took an existing idea from someone else, extended it and profited.
Which is exactly what small companies and open source projects do. But we're getting ahead of ourselves...
Tell me then, what is the second item Microsoft is famous for? MS Office. So then, did Microsoft invent the word processor? Spreadsheet? Email client? Database? Not one thing that Microsoft is famous for is a software idea of their own invention. In every case they have extended a previous software idea. And have gotten rich doing it.
This is how software has ALWAYS been created... until now.
Software patents are simply a tool for the mighty to beat the young in manners they themselves were NEVER subjected to. If the EU passes this proposal they should be consistent and pass a proposal to allow adults to choke and stifle children, to choke them until they die. Sure, we understand that we became adults because someone else was leanient toward us. Just as the process of creating software was leanient toward today's giants. Should that debt cause us to extend the same courtesy toward those that come after us?
Pass software patents? Let us be consistent then: punish the weak, the poor, the young, the lessers - all they who fall outside the scope of the "master race." Good Nazi's vote in favour of patents.