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UKPO Workshops Find EU Patent Directive Faulty
TheEvilOverlord writes "ZDNet has up a report about the current EU patent directive not being up to muster; 'Workshops held by the UK Patent Office (UKPO) around the country have found that the definition of technical contribution in the software patent directive would let through too many patents'. Unfortunately the UKPO can't change the government's stance of supporting this destructive directive."
Software patents are evil. The pro-monopoly lobby is using weasel words like "technical" to hide a loophole through which one can drive freight trains. 50,000 software patents have already been granted by the EPO on this flmsy basis. If you think your softare is protected by copyright, think again - the EPO, backed by legalistic mumbo-jumbo like "technical" has sold your work under the counter to a patent attorney.
Software patents are theft. No two ways about it. Patenting ideas and literary expressions is theft. Expropriation. Corruption.
The lady, and she knows who she is, who invented this particular weasel word will go down in history as a villain.
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It's an absolute disgrace, that the UK media aren't covering this very important issue. The European council have disregarded the decision of the elected Parliament, and have tried to force this through.
Software patents are wrong, and incredibly dangerous territory for SME business. Larger companies may well be able to devend and enforce patents, but smaller players are likely to be unable to do so, and could be forced to lay off staff, raise prices, or even close down.
Software is simply a list of instructions. It is not a physical product. It should not therefore be patentable. Copyright protection is available to those who need it.
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Strange thing this.
When I first heard about this whole software aptent issue, I wrote to my MP, who then forwarded my letter to a minister at the DTI.
He told me that the governments support for software patents was based soley on advice given by the UK Patent office.
If this is no longer the case, surely the government needs to reconsider.....
What matters now is what happens in the European Parliament. The expert hearing they recently held or the amendments proposed (pdf in english) are a lot more interesting than a UK software patent workshop.
Most of these amendments are meant to ensure that software might be part of a patentable invention, while the software as such cannot be patented.
If I was going to write my MEP today, I would urge them to support Michel Rocards amendmends, while opposing the amendmends by Toine Manders and Malcolm Harbour (the last two being "IP" policy extremists with little support in the Parliament anyway). And I would urge them to vote on this matter, as an absolute majority is needed for the Parliament to do anything now.
This might seem unrelated but, I actually met with my MP at a dinner setup by my employers for other reasons (they are big supporters of his locally) and so far I have managed to get him to raise the Regulation of Investigatory Powers act issues with the party leadership after actually shocking him with the actual details of the RIP bill (shifting of the burden of proof of innocence, secret evidence, contradicting the Misuse of Computers act etc) and he asked me for any further info in writing, which he passed onto a select committee who have raised it further - as I understand it, its due to be discussed in Parliament within the next 3 months, which is fantastic proof that your MP *can* work for you.
I wrote a letter to my local MP, and a few London MEPs. With the exception of one conservative MEP, all the responses I got were actually quite positive!
.. dealing with EU directives and regulations, a high proportion like this are actually damaging to business. As you observe, the Commission has scant respect from democracy."
My local MP (conservative) commented:
"After
He took the issue up with the secretary of state for trade and industry, but no reply. After the general election, he's no longer my MP, and I have yet to contact the new one.
To summarise the reponses from the London MEPs I made contact with:
Sarah Ludford (Lib Dem) - Echoed the official Lib Dem stance of "support[ing] continued widespread innovation in software by resisting the wider application of patents in this area".
Robert Evans (Labour) - Oppose software patents, and powerfully stated, "Patents and the threat of litigation must not be used as an anti-competitive weapon to squeeze out small companies", and "Open source software must be allowed to flourish and the Commission must ensure that this Directive does not have any adverse effect on OSS and small software developers".
Theresa Villiers (Conservative) - Received a particularly personal response indicating that she shared my worries on the issue, and assured me that she would continue to oppose software patents.
Charles Tannock (Conservative) - Oh dear, there's always one. Dr. Tannock claimed that the Directive would clarify the existing situation and not allow pure software patents. He also challenged my statements of the harmful effects on OSS and small businesses, and asked me for my evidence. He had clearly not read the Directive text itself.
I wrote back a rather scathing letter, quoting the Directive text itself, and providing numerous references of the negative effects. I presented it all very clearly in a way that he couldn't ignore. After that, I got back a half-amusing reply, saying that the points I raised were beyond his technical expertise. He supposedly forwarded my letter to another MEP, but I haven't heard anything since.
It seems that, on the whole, the British Politicians aren't clueless. The suspicious progress that this Directive has made has got to be due to corporate lobbying efforts.
It really is down to the EP to make sure this Directive doesn't get made law, otherwise I might be forced to start voting UKIP (heaven forbid).
The theft is this: the patent officer and patent attorney collaborate to create "property", the patent, using deliberately vague legalistic language that stakes a claim to an idea or domain of work.
In theory, this domain of work is entirely new and the patent is the basis for the investment necessary to exploit it.
In practice, and especially with software patents, no domain of work is truly innovative and no idea is original: rather, we create software by incredibly many incredibly small incremental steps. All creative work in programming is the result of community effort, which is why no-one can develop software in isolation. We need to be part of a community in order to create. To pretend otherwise is to lie, thus all software patent applications start with a falsehood, "I invented this".
To aquire a claim on a domain means that all others working in this domain lose the right to the fruit of their labour. Thus, you can literally see years or decades of hard work being captured and made someone else's property. Where software patents are granted, copyrights are being annulled without due process. Expropriation.
The only route to appeal is through the courts and this is impossible for the majority of people.
If someone steals my life savings, this is theft. If someone steals my life's work, this is theft. No difference except the latter is sponsored and protected by the bureaucrats who sell the patents in the first place.
It's very analagous with the way traditional common lands have been taken from those that lived on them and granted to wealthy newcomers through the use of legal documents backed up by the power of the state.
Basically the software industry has been hijacked.
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