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Software Patents In The European Union Continued...
Christopher Reimer writes "O'Reilly Policy DevCenter has a nice overview concerning the legalizing software patents in the European Union. From the article: 'The Computer Implemented Inventions Directive (CIID), which seeks to clarify the issue, is still being fought over in the EU and may or may not result in legalizing them. For small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and in particular, free software projects, there is much to lose.'"
Would like to hear from any European Slashdotters who have actually written to or phoned or emailed their elected representatives on this noxious attempt to hobble innovation.
Any response from your public "servants?"
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Preventing the directive going ahead now is probably impossible. It would make more sense to get out of it by leaving the EU. If two countries were to leave, the whole edifice would probably collapse.
"Incredible," said the kzin. "If the Patriarchy tried to force such a law on kzinti, we would exterminate the Patriarchy for its insolence."
- Ringworld (Larry Niven)
If this isn't the case, how are the people who patent stuff in the EU that's already been patented in the U.S. going to have a leg to stand on?
I'd be really interested to know if the people pushing for software patents had any connections with U.S. based corporations... I smell somethin fishy...
Am I right in thinking that this will cause US patents to become valid in Europe and vice versa?
Obviously open source development methods are trampled on since this doesn't make politicians enough money.
Get the press and the unions in action. Explain to them that, just like in the US, many labour jobs have already been migrated to low-wages countries. Explain that, just like the US, the only way to have a viable economy is to switch to a knowledge end service economy. Software development is one area where Europe could shine.
Then point out that any incentive to invest in software knowledge for small and medium size companies is pointless when they can be killed instantaneously by large corps with large patent portfolio's.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
If the directive is approved, it will make it clear that any software patent granted up until now was unlawful and is therefore null and void. This will mean that patent holders will be forced to re-apply for their patents as soon as the directive is made law!
Meanwhile, anything that would have violated one of the unlawful patents is now legitimate prior art for blocking the re-application.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
So, if some croporation decides to sue for patent infringement the makers of a particular piece of OSS, who do they sue? Every single developper? How are they going to round them all up and corral them into a courtroom? How are they gonna prove the actual degree of involvement of each and everyone of them?
Or are they going to sue the end-users? How could they ferret-out all the end-users of a particular piece of software?
If the going gets though, the ongoing OSS efforts will simply go underground with a vengeance, as they won't have any scruples in blatantly siphonning-off actual patents. And with easy encription and free-net to distribute information, any effort to counter OSS is doomed to failure. And any "examples" brought out by courts at the request of croporations will simply strengthen the resolve to break the vicious IP cartels. Once the idea that IP is theft enters the public's mind, no amount of repression will be able to curtail the demise of IP "industries".
Having said that, I see that most people on slashdot want to get rid of software patents, but what I'm wondering is, why only software?
I believe that the problem is not software vs. non-software patents, but the general quailty of software patents vs. the quality of non-software patents. It's not that software shouldn't be patentable, but that a great deal of the worst offenders are not patents on specific inventions, but entire ideas. In some cases, they're patenting the problem, instead of the solution.
One example is from the FFII wewbsite: A patent on trapping viruses. After a brief glance through the description and the abstract, it seems reasonable. Except when we look at the claims, this patent attempts to claim all virtual environments used to capture viruses. If you were asked to implement this 'invention', the patent wouldn't help much, as the difficulty of the implmentation is in figuring out how to make it work, and this patent is more of an overall design.
Examples could be given for good and not-to-broad software patents, but the general feeling is SW patents are usually too broad and too easily infringed. While not allowing any SW patents might be a bit extreme, but it's better than letting them in now and letting them to cause further harm to the software industry.
That's why there still are a strong EU-critical movement atleast in sweden. I personally firmly believe that a democracy cease to function when it ges too large, USA shows it today, EU will show it tomorrow, when the politicians get too far from the people, people lose interest, just compare the last national election's participation (81%) to EU election's particpation (38%).
To: All pro-software patent lawyers inc. Carl Oppedahl
Dear Patent Lawyer,
You have claimed, based on your experience as a patent lawyer, that software patents can help even small commercial enterprises. Could you please explain why software patents are not harmful both to society and to freedom of expression given the case of an open-source developer who, as a result of working unpaid on his/her project as a hobby giving his/her inventions away freely for the benefit of society, i.e. without any project income, without any corporate project sponsor to pay legal fees, without sufficient personal savings or income to pay for even a brief consultation with a "cheap" patent lawyer, and without a patent lawyer prepared to work pro bono, is threatened with a patent lawsuit by a corporation demanding he/she removes the allegedly infringing software from the project's website, leaving the impoverished developer with no real choice but to comply with the demand and close the project?
One recent unresolved case, which is not unique, is that of the German mathematician and open-source software developer Helmut Dersch who had no financial choice but to remove his software from his project website. He had no money to pay for a patent application at the time of his own invention, which pre-dates the patent application of the IPX company.
Here is a summary of the case history.
I hope you will take the time to reply at moderate length for the sake of explaining to the open-source developer community why software patents are not a threat to completely unfunded open-source projects.
Thank you for reading this.
Last posted here without a reply.
There are several reasons I'm against software patents but not other patents:
1) Software patents tend to be applied for on individual ideas, rather than a single invention. Take a look at Photoshop's splash screen. How many patent numbers are there for that one single program? Not only that, there are dozens, if not hundreds of "ideas" that are embodied in every program. Sorting, for instance: whether you sort emails or high scores, if your program isn't a highschool assignment, it probably uses a sort. Or online help, the concept of which has been around for decades now, yet a company in Japan was just crushed with a patent on it.
2) The software lifecycle is shorter than the hardware lifecycle. How long have we been using combustion engines now? Fundamentally the basic engine hasn't changed in decades, but people have invented improvements. Have you seen improvements for the Commodore 64's GEOWrite program lately? Does it really need 20 years worth of protection?
3) Enforcability. Because honestly, the majority of software out there is closed source proprietary stuff, the only way to find out if infringement is actually occurring with a software patent is to sue the victim and force them to show you the source. If I patent an engine design and you start selling it, all I need to do is take apart your engine. If you have a patent on "doing X using A,B,C" and your competitor does X with 1,2,3 you have no way of knowing if they infringe on your patent or not except to sue them and let the courts sort it out. This is what leads to the huge messes like SCO demanding IBM's source, and probably why most companies settle even if they have a strong case: they don't want to give up their source to their competitor. In the end if you're sued and it turns out you're not infringing, the plaintiff gets off with an "oops my bad".
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Exactly!
Copyright is for speech, patents are for inventions. Software is not an invention! Software is an expression of mathematical theory. Let's look at a concrete example.
Let's say that I am a contractor and my client wants me to build a bridge across a river. I say sure I know how to do that - no problem. I don't have to worry about patent infringement when building a bridge because the concept of creating a "material object to span open space or water" is not patentable (IANAL and there are some who would make an argument that the concept of a bridge IS patentable but I think that concept is ludicrous. Perhaps someone more familiar with Patent law could let us know whether or not the concept of a bridge is indeed patentable - excluding prior art).
Building software is like building a bridge (or a building for that matter).
Let's look at this from the speech perspective. Imagine if you were writing a term paper for school or doing a research project. You need to be able to express the ideas found in your research material but wait....oh I can't say THAT since THOSE words express AN idea that has been patented. You wouldn't be able paraphrase anything. Paraphrasing in term papers or building upon prior research is exactly what we as software developers do every day. I need a way to ingest configuration information into my program so that I can dynamically effect the programs behavior at startup or runtime so I build software to do that so I build something that will do just that (or more likely I use commons-digester or some other OS library that has already solved this problem). So if someone had a patent for "a method for ingesting configuration information into a program that alters behavior dynamically at startup or runtime" then I would be unable to write MY software. It wouldn't matter that I outlined the problem, I examined the technology available, and I produced MY OWN solution to the problem since any solution would fall underneath this patent and thus be infringing. It is ridiculous. Copying someone else's solution verbatim would be wrong and violate copyright...protection exists (ie I can't solve the problem using the same words/code that you did, but I can use my own words).
Say it with me: software is speech , software is speech, SOFTWARE IS SPEECH
I'm sure that in the time it took to write this rant the argument has moved on but hey it's my first post, I'll savor it anyway.
Oh by the way you all owe me big money since I own the following patent:
Patent 1,678,976,543: "A method for conveying a grouping of words and/or characters in such a way that it forms a witticism, quip, jibe or other similarly or dissimilarly classed phrase at the end of an email, letter, newsgroup posting, or any other form of communication (physical or electronic)"
This sig has been licensed by above for use in accordance with Patent: 1,678,976,543.
The EU proposal for Software Patents has absolutely no democratic legitimacy. Any government that is supporting this proposal is doing so against the will of the majority of its people, and against the interests of its own economy. Free software has great potential to reduce IT costs for business in Western Europe, and introducing laws that have the potential to harm the development of free software is counterproductive - only supporting big business. As a pro-European, I would be devestated if my representatives in Europe were corrupt enough to be pushed into supporting this law, and as a consequence, I would campaign against any further integration of my country (the UK) with the EU. I would also campaign for UK withdrawl from the EU if this law were passed.
I believe that patent law in general needs massive reform. How can people sensible patent aspects of the human genome? for example. This is nonsense, and amounts to little more than a law that allows for blatent profiteering at the expense of the common good. Large companies often use patents as an anti-competitive weapon. Patents are often awarded on the most shaky of grounds, and amount to little more than anti-competitive devices.
Software is inherently unpatentable. It is an expression of ideas, in the same way that a book is an expression of ideas. Books can be copyrighted, as can software. I don't see how patents help to secure the 'Intellectual Property' of commercial organisations.
The leverage applied by large American companies to EU officials is unacceptable. American business should not be interfering in the internal affairs of the EU, particularly when their Patent system is in such a mess.