Slashdot Mirror
Major Blow to Opponents of Software Patents in EU
Sanity writes "According to a FFII report, and a Financial Times article, proponents of software patents have just won a significant victory against smaller software companies and open source software proponents as the EU's legal affairs committee rejected most of the effective amendments that were proposed to the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive, which is widely perceived to usher-in U.S.-style software patents in the EU. All is not yet lost as the rejected amendments can be re-tabled when the entire European Parliament has the opportunity to vote next month. If you value the freedom to code without worrying about getting sued, and you live in the EU, now is the time to take effective action." And JasonFleischer writes "Richard Stallman has a piece in The Guardian which does a nice job of explaining the problems with the EU patent directive that will be voted on next month (and for that matter software patents in general), using literary examples."
The parliament, the only elected body, has little to NO power whatsoever. The commision says, "we want to do this." Parliament says, "that's a very stupid idea, no way." Whereupon the commision says: "Oh, fuck you, we'll do it anyway."
That would only help to make the institutions even more dependent on proprietary software. There is nothing to gain with that.
The companies calling for software patents are Nokia, Siemens and Philips, consumer electronics companies, and patent lawyers who see an opportunity to parasitise another industry.
the US already has software patents and it has the biggest software business in the world
And most currently granted but currently unenforceable european software patents are owned by US companies. It is suicidal for the EU to allow them, basically bending over for bill gate's dick in europe's ass (Ireland loves american cock, apparently).
You can spell neither amateur nor enthusiast. Boeing or ford would laugh at the idea of being threatened by "amateurs". However, because software IS different to physical goods, microsoft has to buy politicians to try to stem the tide of open source.
I've found the right e-mail address to all of them except one, if you want to tell them what you think, here's the addresses:
e u.int, cfjellner@europarl.eu.int,o m, anna.hedh@telia.com,. int, nlundgren@europarl.eu.int,u .int, carl.schlyter@mp.se,. int, anders@wijkman.nu, lars.wohlin@telia.com,n .se, maria@liberal.se
jandersson@europarl.eu.int, charlotte.cederschiold@moderat.se,
lek@europarl.
helene.goudin@telia.c
ehedkvist@europarl.eu.int, ghokmark@europarl.eu.int,
aibrisagic@europarl.eu
cmalmstrom@europarl.e
jsjostedt@europarl.eu.int, e-b.svensson@bredband.net,
awestlund@europarl.eu
inger.segelstrom@riksdage
However the inger.segelstrom@riksdagen.se wasn't valid longer, I tried with inger.segelstrom@europarl.eu.int but that failed aswell. If anyone know the right address please let me know.
Something that is "simple" is both "obvious" and not "novel".
If you choose to define simple as being obvious and not novel then that would be true. However, if you check the dictionary, simple is more traditionally defined as being easy or uncomplicated.
Of course you may disagree, but then the issue is what "is" an "obvious" invention ? At the moment professionals around the world think that what is "not obvious" for the patent office is instead quite "obvious" to them.
This would also be a common misunderstanding of patent law. The test is not whether something this is "obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art" as is so often talked about here(assuming we are discussing US patent law, EU law is similar). The question is whether something is "obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art". While you can read most of the issued patents and say that they are obvious after reading them, the question is whether they were obvious at the time they were invented/filed. While it is easy to say that they would be, actually proving that they were obvious is an entirely different ball game. Thus far I have yet to get any slashdotter to take up that challenge and even come close to succeeding on any of the patent stories posted here.
The problem is: Give user graphic feedback on background tasks.
Solution: Something that grows over time and is visually representable. Can be anything, from a growing baloon to a growing bar. Is any of the peculiar implementation a "novelty" ?
I do get the point, however you are ignoring many other possible solutions which would solve the same problem. For example, a colored block could be presented which would transistion from black to white (or red to violet) as the taks completes, or a text box which displays a percentage of task completion, or a audible tone which increases in frequency as the task nears completion. How exactly is a progress bar which grows as the task nears completion the one and only solution that any person skilled in the art would think of when presented with the problem?
On the other hand, the courts have ruled that if something has provided a solution to a long-felt need in the art, that it actually lends credibility to the solution being non-obvious. See MPEP 716.04. Take this as you will, but to some extent it does make sense.
Why should you stop providing your "own" solution ? You didn't COPY it ! You didnt even know it existed !
Granted this is a problem, but it is also the reason why penalties are smaller in this situation than when someone knowningly infringes.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
While you are on your billion rant, the "correct" way is to use commas, not apostrophes, to separate the groups of three digits. :-)
I'm with you on the fact that the British system is more systematic in that it counts the power of one million (bi- = 1e6 ^ 2; tri- = 1e6 ^ 3; quadri = 1e6 ^ 4 etc.) whereas the American system counts the power of one thousand, less one (bi- = 1e3 ^ (2+1); tri- = 1e3 ^ (3+1) etc.). And I mourn the loss of "milliard" from British usage. However, given that even the UK government now uses the American standard, I fear that the war is lost.
However, both systems are really French in origin, and there's no overwhelming historical justification for choosing one over the other.
On the subject of the word "program(me)", I believe that the overwhelming British preference is for -mme in all cases except that of computing, where -m is almost ubiquitous. To me, seeing -mme used in print is usually an indicator that the author (or editor) is less than entirely au courant with computing matters. But that is just an opinion. I must say, though, that the parent post's erratic spelling and grammar do not give the impression that the writer is an authority on orthographical matters!
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
No, you are wrong. What we are seeing are bad patents that are neither unique nor novel and companies abusing the patent system here in the US.
So we end up with patents like Amazon's assinine "one-click" patent, to Kodak pulling out their Wang patents against Java.
I could post links to bad software patents all day long that pretty much 'eclipse' your idea of "really good arguments".
Personally, I take a more balanced view
But the problem is that the system is so abused that it is dishonest, if not immoral. You would think that EU representatives/legal committees would recognize this, hence my parent post.
Also, I find your comment about little software companies really offensive, as many of us work for such companies and it's how we put food on the table.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Copyright clearly doesn't work because the software industry is populated by fly-by-night companies that don't produce anything new, they just pump out the same old crap, brand it and play marketting games to get consumers to buy it.
But (1) the copyright is not created to ensure that everything produced is of high quality. Neither is Software, literary or music.
(2) It is not because of copyright that low quality stuff is produced.
(3) Removing copyright protection would not help increasing software quality. Not even if you do other things as well. Or do you think that removing copyright protection for music would make Britney Spears disappear? (And is that really a worthwile goal?)
I think you should be less concerned with low-quality software and small companies. If they are no good, ignore them. Write some good software instead.
Why must all software have high quality?
)9TSS
Were we to have voted for the constitution we would still have a parliament that can be ignored by the commission and the council. We would have traded in our national parliaments for some paper tiger. Don't come telling me that we would not have made this trade since our national gouvernments would drop their veto in some areas. This means effectively that power is transferred away from the national gouvernments.
The EU is NOT a federal country. It has very little power over member states. The parliament has a consultative function but no real authority over member states. The Commission is just an administrative body and has no real power either. The EU Council has the power, it's basically a board room where EU countries negociate stuff. States are represented in the Council by the Heads of States not by anonymous European civil servants as you imply.
This is a correct but incomplete description of the status quo. The rub is that member states are obliged by EU contract to adjust their laws to the content of EU directives.
This implies a transfer of legislative powers to the government-controlled EU Council, which undermines the checks and balances a democracy should have. To continue your US analogy without federal government:
Imagine a council of State Governors could create directives that have to be integrated into state law, unless the states want to break the US constitution.
An acceptable way of fixing this would be to give more power to the EU parliament. This would turn the EU parliament into a body with powers similar to Congress, and restore a proper balance between government and parliament.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Try the European Software Patent Horror Gallery.
Stallman against copyrighted software? WTF are you talking about?
Stallman (and the FSF) likes copyright, but they simply think that copyleft is a superiour buisness model - and copyleft is not a seperate system of protection, it's basically a weakened form of copyright. Copyright gives an author exclusive rights to his or her work, and the right to give others these rights. An artist may say, "Copy this painting all you want, but if anyone asks give me credit."
The GPL would not work without copyright. You know the "no further restrictions"-clause, that would not work without copyright.
What Stallman and the FSF are against is simply stronger versions of copyright, which they feel infringe freedoms of speech and press.
Actually, there is no Nobel price in economy ...There is a price that is given in the same time as the nobel price and borrows the nobelprices status, but in reallity it is the Swedish riksbanken that give out a price in economy ...
Now would be a good time to remember that Microsoft and Apple are working together to fight against the open-source community on this.
(Thanks to Leoxx for the linkage.)