Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
For small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and in particular, free software projects, there is much to lose.
And for the attorneys much to gain...
My sigs offend the max # of people all over the world, regardless of race, religion, color, sex or creed. It's a gift.
It's good to know that European beaurocrats are every bit as ineffective and corrupt as our own here in the states.
Let's hear it for consistency!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Please do not get confused. The Parliament is doing the Right Thing(tm).
It is the European Commision which does what it wants..or rather what Big Business(tm) wants...
We've tried talking to our politicians in sweden, they are either too unknowing about these topics or just dont care.
Touchy topic, but many swedish citizens want to leave the EU.
FTA: "If more programmers and SMEs approach their MEPs and go beyond the single letter, we may yet win."
But how do we as IT people explain the general public this would be a disaster to European economy? What could start some emotion going for this issue? The customer is also going to be victimised! Low quality and low security software galore probably. But do they know?
Somehow I know this concerns everybody, not only people in the industry. Because democracy is being ignored for something a lot of people don't understand doesn't mean they can get away with it.
I know a considerable amount (for a programmer) about patent law, and I've read a fair number of patents.
I do not, however, know how one can clearly distinguish between software and non-software patents.
It is not as easy as one might think. Many things we call "software patents" do not mention software or even computers. This didn't use to be the case. They used to insist that an example hardware system be described in the patent, perhaps as a "preferred embodiment". Now many patents simply describe an algorithm. Whether that algorithm is carried out by computer, sliderule, abacus, or pencil and paper is often not explained.
A further complication arises when software is a part of an invention that also has hardware components. There are many such inventions today.
Unfortunately, "I know a software patent when I see one" probably wouldn't cut it in the courts. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I could comment on this problem.
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...
Try http://writetothem.com/.
Yeah, I wrote to the 6 MEPs that represent my region (Yorkshire and Humberside). They include 2 Labour MEPs (Richard Corbett and Linda McAvan), 2 Conservative MEPs (Edward McMillan Scott and Timothy Kirkhope), a Liberal Democrat (Diana Wallis) and an member of the UK Independance Party (Godfrey Bloom).
That was on the 1st of March. So far, I have had exactly 1 response, from Edward McMillan Scott, and that consisted of a standard form letter, indicating that the Conservatives were *for* the proposed Directive on Computer Implemented Inventions, because it would "offer [the patent office] secure legal grounds for refusing a patent for an invention involving pure software".
The letter ended up by stating that the European Parliament had voted to restart the process, indicating that he (or more likely the secratary who selected the form letter response) hadn't actually read my letter, which was to protest about this vote to restart being ignored by the Commission, as reported on Slashdot.
To date, I haven't received so much as a "thank you for your letter" from any of the others.
This was the first time I have ever been motivated enough to write to my representatives. Considering the complete lack of a response, it may be the last.
I can see now why direct action is so appealing to so many these days. It's the only way to get anything done.
The reason is that you patent an invention, not speech, and software is speech. Software, like the written word in other forms of speech, is already protected by copyright. Patent protection on top of that is redundant and problematic in its own right, for how can you patent speech?
This is not true. The parliament voted explicitly against the directive as presented to them by the EU Commission and made many important changes. However, the broken decision process in the EU allowed the Commission to totally ignore the Parliament's decision and revive the Commission's old version of the directive to vote about.
Yes. I wrote to the French MEP who is on employment and international trade comitees and who is my political color.
In reply I was forwarded a press statement that says
1. It isn't over _we_ haven't decided.
2. What is with the notion that the process is undemocratic. We the parliment decide and everything that has gone before is normal procedure.
3. Patents can only be applied to software that is part of hardware. Business logic can not be patented.
NOTE this is my reading of a press statement in French and in politician language.
Now I bet that it will take a lot longer than those trying to push patents on everything under the sun would like. And I hope that in the end basic programming ideas and business logic will not be covered by patents in Europe as this political group says in its PR.
realkiwi
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.
For one thing, there's already a perfectly good mechanism for protecting actual software and source code: copyright.
And for another, the bar to entry is much, much lower with software. You don't need all the resources for mass production, manufacturing, duplication, marketing, or anything other than a web site.
AIUI, the raison d'être of patents is to protect the inventor: to stop a big company coming along, copying his or her invention, and using their much bigger resources to develop and mass produce the product and lock him or her out. But that's not a problem for software; the big company can't copy the software directly, and they don't have much of an advantage in mass production either. So why have them?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Well, would you believe it; seconds after I posted my previous message, I got a response from Richard Corbett MEP. He includes a nice summary of his position, copied here:
"My position is as follows:
* I am not in favour of the patenting of software as exists in the US.
* Europe needs a uniform legal approach to stop the drift towards extending patentability to areas, which would not have been traditionally allowed, and to stop patentability of pure business methods, algorithms or mathematical methods.
* Software products as such, must not be patented.
* Opensource software must be allowed to flourish and the Commission must ensure that this Directive must not have adverse effects on opensource software and small software developers.
* Patents and the threat of litigation must not be used as an anti-competitive weapon to squeeze out small companies."
I'm much more encouraged by those views. Let's just hope they translate into actions.
Patents don't work for software for the same reason they don't work for literature. A computer program, like a novel, is a collection of a great many ideas taken from all over the place. The value isn't in any specific solution, but rather in the way the whole package is combined.
Imagine if a novelist had to look up every metaphore or interesting sentence structure in a patent database somewhere. On top of that, the database would be organized in such a way that the novelist could never really be sure that he'd found all the relevent patents. If you compare something to an apple, does the patent that mentions comparisons to oranges apply? They're both fruit, after all. The only way to gain reasonable assurance that a given sentence doesn't infringe would be to ask a lawyer, and even the lawyer could only give an opinion - with the final decision to be made by a court.
If novelists had to work that way, only large companies with defensive patent portfolios of their own could write books. Individuals could never afford the legal staff needed to make sure their work wasn't infringing.
Software works much the same way. You encounter a problem and you try to solve it. Every time you solve something, even the smallest issue, you might be infringing on somebody's patent. Anybody with a patent portfolio and a lot of lawyers can put you out of business.
The patent system was meant to encourage people to publish scientific discoveries rather than keeping them as trade secrets. But most software problems are such that the effort to find the patented solution in a database is more than would be required to just solve the problem yourself. There are a few rare exceptions (RSA, for example), but there's no way the handful of gems can outweigh the harm done by patents.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow