Slashdot Mirror
EU to Redefine Scope of Software Patents
karvind writes "According to story on ZDNet, the European Parliament (EP) has enlisted the help of intellectual property lawyers to amend the directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions so that companies are prevented from patenting pure software. According to article: "The ongoing argument over patents in the software industry revolves around the distinction between physical inventions that use software -- such as a car braking system -- and pure software." (See also this earlier story about the EU and software patents.)"
The EP is pushing for the right changes, making it impossible to weasel patents through by using weasel words. We just have to hope they get them through.
So.. it has come to this
Or at least, that's what I think, having read the Financial Times' analysis of the changes.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
They just have to word the laws right. Something along the lines of under no circumstances whatsoever shall patents be granted software, algorithms, business methods, or mathematical expressions, techniques or constructs.
The law already pretty much says that (barring the words "circumstances", "whatsoever"). But the patent lawyers and the EPO bend the rules anyway. See here.
)9TSS
Pure Software seems to be a very very strict definition.
.. whereas this is what the democratic EP wanted to amend it to, to expressly disallow pure software patents:
The actual text of the directive said it best. This is what the pro-patent unelected heavily-lobbied EC was pushing:
"computer-implemented invention" means any invention the performance of which involves the use of a computer, computer network or other programmable apparatus, the invention having one or more features which are realised wholly or partly by means of a computer program or computer programs
'computer-implemented invention' means any invention within the meaning of the European Patent Convention the performance of which involves the use of a computer, computer network or other programmable apparatus and having in its implementations one or more non-technical features which are realised wholly or partly by a computer program or computer programs, besides the technical features that any invention must contribute
The important part is "and having in its implementations one or more non-technical features". It's a non-computing process running under computer control.
As for your example about JPG compression.. Almost any hardware process can be implemented in software (that's the beauty of it, after all), so I imagine that you could patent the design of a machine which does JPG compression, but not actual JPG compression itself.
That is, you would be free to implement JPG compression in your own way, without being at risk of litigation, provided that it doesn't conflict with any real-world patented hardware design. If you implemented it in software, then nothing could stop you. At least, that's the way I hope it is.
They do want to allow patents on physical inventions and industrial processes normally patentable which include software components, but they don't want software patents like jpeg, double clicking, online shopping, etc. That is why legal expert advice is needed to get the wording right.
They are not going to let patent lawyers write the directive. They are consulting with legal experts" - certainly with at least some good and honest lawyers and alikes like the ones of the EFF - to make sure that it will be absolutely impossible for the patent office, patent lawyers and big corporations to twist the the meaning of the law to have software patents granted anyway.
Software patents have already been illegal in the EU, even if the patent office did grant them. No company however has to my knowledge ever in the EU tried to sue another company for such software patent, because they know it wouldn't stand in court.
A printer driver isn't a novel and non-obvious invention.
A printer isn't actually controlled by the driver; the driver just 'translates' a, say, Photoshop picture into a printer-comprehensible 'this is what the page should look like' picture. And since patents should not be granted for "the treatment, the manipulation, the representation and the presentation of information through software", that seems to me to exclude drivers altogether.
So.. it has come to this
Except there was prior art on the RAS patent. Technically it should not have been granted. The only reason they got away with it is because the U.K. goverment decided that the prior implementation should remain a closely guarded state secret. So unfortunately your claims that the RAS patent was somehow special fail utterly.
My claim is that the RSA algorithm is patent-worthy. True, the patent should have been granted to Ellis and Cocks rather than Rivest, Shamir and Adelman, but that's a separate issue.
Since you're groaning, you might want to check this out: http://www.litenverden.org/?p=18. Sadly, there's about zero chance Europe is going to do what it should do. There is just too much lobby money and influence. And that's my big concern. These parliamentarians are not thinking about principles or what's good for their people or countries. They are listening to convincing propaganda from global monopolies and IP law firms and selling the EU future in the name of WIPO IP treaty compliance and IP law harmonization. The fact is that it's time to chuck the treaties and start over with some ideas that did not originate in the WIPO Mob. But that takes guts. Don't hold your breath.
Most patent professionals, whether they work at the Patent Office or for a firm of private patent agents, do in fact have their basic training in engineering rather than in law. The idea has always been that the difficult part of the job is to be able to understand the technical aspects of the inventions, and to be sufficiently familiar with the technological field in question to be able to determine if an invention is indeed new, non-obvious etc.
So the traditional way of recruiting new people in the patent sector always has been to hire an engineer, and give him on the job training for the legal stuff he needs to know. This is different from how it works in for example trademarks, where (nowadays) most new recruits would have a law degree under their belt before they start working at the Patent Office, or for a patent and trademark agent.
Now, considering the quality of the prior art searches conducted by most patent offices before granting their one-click patents, as opposed to the advanced legal argumentation acrobatics required to claim that software can be patented even though the law explictly says that it can't, this may perhaps change in the future.
But at least for now, most of the people that you would spontaneously call "patent lawyers" aren't in fact lawyers at all, but engineers or technicians that have taken a side course in patent law.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
Give an example of a technology that was kept so secret by its original inventor that it had to be rediscovered by someone else. Just one will do.
The electronoic computer.
The first was created built used and destried at Bletchy Park in England to crack the Enigma code.
Becaus it was kept secret the first electronic computer was claimed for many years to have been developed by the Americans
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
http://totallyabsurd.com/ absurd inventions? yep lots of them, glad to know software isn't the worse of all posibilities ^^;;
How about this?