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."

Comments

A constant battle

[saskboy]

With the introduction of DMCA legislation in Canada yesterday, and now this in the EU, it brought to my mind a realization that the battle to keep software free, and the right to copy media we own is going to be a lifelong battle. If we win one battle, we haven't won the war, and if we lose a battle like this in the EU it doesn't mean we've lost completely, it just means we have to work even harder to overcome it.

Re:A constant battle

[thorndt]

Famous (and totally applicable) quote: "The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance."

Re:A constant battle

[Znork]

"Have you considered the possibility that the people who want software patents make really good arguments"

Actually, no. Free market economists from Adam Smith through Hayek and Friedman have expressed serious doubts about the effects of patents and intellectual monopolies. It's becoming obvious that the damage they cause to the market is simply far greater than the positive effects.

The diversion of economic resources from the fundamental wealth creating ever more efficient production of goods into negative value products like marketing and inefficiency due to monopoly effects is severely damaging the foundation of our societys wealth.

Intellectual monopolies like patents are to the competetiveness of our industries like five-year plan economy was to Soviet bed factories. Good protection from competition (see, no 3.6 million bullshit little bed factories), but frankly it's not very good for the wealth of nations.

Re:A constant battle

[koi88]

Maybe I'm feeding the trolls, but I'll try to answer to some of your arguments...
it's the software business that is calling for software patents to be granted in the EU

It's mostly the BIG software companies that love patents. Smaller ones or even hobby programmers can't afford patenting their software.
So software patents lead to more monopolization.

the US already has software patents and it has the biggest software business in the world

I'm not sure if that's true, but the US also has the biggest economy, so this is not surprising. BTW, bigger companies are more likely to send outsource and offshore their develpment departments to countries like India or China. So software patents play a role in deminishing the American software industry.

there's amature radio enthusiests. There's amature car enthusiests. There's amature plane enthusiests.
Have you seen these amateurs selling their stuff in large numbers? Boeing, GM and the like would get really angry. They would sue you to bancruptcy.
Then for this type of industry you need to invest a lot of money anyway for plants, raw materials and the like.
Software, on the other hand, can, once developed, be reproduced for free. So this is an area where small companies should be able to compete with much bigger ones (and they do).

Yes, we won't have the 3.6 million bullshit little software companies that we have now, but hey, that's a small price to pay for maturing an industry into something actually reliable.

Yeah, like the biggest software company produces the most reliable programs...

Re:A constant battle

[Anonymous Coward]

The mere fact that Open Source software, writen by amateurs can compete with commercial software is not a testimony to how great Open Source is, it's a testimony to how shit commercial software is. It's a testimony to how little innovation has occured over the last 40 years.

Sorry, but I don't get your point. To clarify, you are saying that:
1. Open source is written by amateurs and commercial software by proffesionals.
2. The greateness of f/oss is in fact a marker of commercial software's low quality.
3. Little innovation has occured in the last 40 years.
4. All of the above can be solved by patenting everything, institutionalizing a couple of gigantic monopoly - sustained software companies that will drive all that is medium and small out of the business.

Get real man. It seems to me you don't know shit about the sofware industry and about innovation and progress in general.

Re:A constant battle

[golgotha007]

That we'd have better cars and planes and drugs today if the patent system wasn't around?

-1 Irrelevant
The difference between cars/planes and books/code are too different to lump together in some comparison (especially an unproven one).

Taking Stallman's example, why do you think that patent law has not been applied to novels?

If you can answer that question, then you should be able to answer the question on why it patent law should not be applied to software code.

Re:A constant battle

[Znork]

Yes, and if there was no world outside the Soviet Union you'd be thinking 'wow, how did they make all that progress in such a short period of time'.

Even if you win the special olympics you're still handicapped.

The primary correlations with innovation rate and technological advancement are education and communications infrastructure. (Patenting rates correlate better with divorce rates than they do with technological indicators, suggesting they're mostly an artefact of the legal system).

And, yes, I do believe we'd have better cars, planes and drugs with a system different from the patent system. It would depend on the industry, as patents are proportionally damaging to the extent that their monopoly effects divert resources from the primary production capacity of the industries. For example, look at the pharmaceuticals, where twice as much is spent on marketing and administration as is spent on research, largely due to monopoly protection.

As such, the effects are getting worse as more resources are diverted as the intellectual monopolies part of our economy grows. Prices remain high, while more people are employed in non-wealthproducing monopoly-protected jobs, and the engine of wealth is offshored.

Re:A constant battle

[golgotha007]

You do realize that lack of competition stagnates innovation, right?

As an example, why has Miscrosoft only recently started active development with Internet Explorer?

I can assure you that if Firefox had not come along, you wouldn't be hearing about new IE developments such as integrated tab browsing and full PNG support.

And small and medium sized software companies produce crap that shouldn't be in the industry. That's my point.

Tell me then, how does a small company become a large one if, by your words, small companies produce crap? How do you think Apple Computer or even Microsoft got started? You're way off base here.

Re:A constant battle

[Hognoxious]

That's a blatantly dumb argument as, for a start, it's the software business that is calling for software patents to be granted in the EU..

It's not the software business; it's big software businesses.

More than coding

[mccalli]

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."

It's more than that now. A democratically elected body has rejected it, an appointed body is enforcing it. It's now about more than just code. more than software patents. It's now about the primacy of elected bodies.

Cheers,
Ian
(UK - yes, I'll be writing but not merely on 'just' the software patent point)

Re:More than coding

[mccalli]

...Is the democratically elected body some how superior to the appointed body in all matters?...If so, then you may have a legitimate concern. However, if as I suspect it is not, then the system would seem to be working as it was designed and you may have a bigger fight on your hands than just one piece of legislation if you expect to stop this thing.

Absolutely. The concern remains legitimate whether the system is working as intended or not. The system itself is clearly wrong.

Europe's political scene is in chaos at the moment, with what was assumed to be the most pro-Europe country voting against a proposed constitution (France). In fact, almost everywhere politicians have dared to give people the vote instead of just waving it through the vote has gone against the European institutions, and in many places a vote will not even be chanced because of overwhelming popular opposition. Reasons are disparate (France thought the constitution was too Anglo-Saxon, Britain thinks Europe is too much slanted towards the French...) , but the point remains that these institutions have little to no popular support. Rubbish like ignoring a parliament to enact the will of civil servants will certainly not be helping.

Cheers,
Ian

Great article by Stallman

[gbulmash]

I've never seen the patent concept put in such easy-to-understand terms before. I didn't need it explained to me (of course :-)), but after reading it, I had better ideas on how to explain it to others.

OTOH, it might be more accessible if he'd used a more accessible example. The example appeals more to the French and francophiles, and fans of great literature. I'd apply it to sandwiches. Imagine if every sandwich shop had to pay the Earl of Sandwich $1 for every sandwich they sold (and then had to pass that cost on to the consumer in the form of higher prices). Then EoS sues McDonalds, as a hamburger is actually a hamburger sandwich, and since he's getting $1 a sandwich from Akbar's Gas n' Munch on 135th Street, he's suing McDonalds for $100 billion.

But the guy who patented combining cheese and meat is suing McDonalds. And so is the guy who patented the extending sandwich flavor by adding condiments. And so is the guy who patented the idea of conveying french fries to customers in a cardboard container. And so is the guy who patented a method of conveying liquid from a distributing nozzle to the customer by means of a cyllindrical shaped device open at only one end (i.e. a freakin' CUP). And yes, the cup, and mayonnaise, and cheeseburgers, and fries in a cardboard carton all seem like obvious inventions with lots of prior art. But we've seen such silliness get through the patent office in America.

Don't think the government is going to put the money in place to keep some overworked, underpaid patent examiner from approving a patent on cheeseburgers! And once the patent is granted, getting it revoked or dismissed is so expensive that every little burger stand will pay the guy who got the cheeseburger patent $10,000 a year because they don't have the $10,000,000 to fund the challenge.

When granted for truly original inventions within a certain limited scope, patents are a wonderful thing that encourage innovation. But that's in theory. In practice, they're something else entirely.

Don't let the patent lawyers and the politicians they lease paint rosy pictures of theory over the cesspit of practice. Don't let software patents pass in Europe.

- Greg

Why Innovation Is Stifled

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

It costs very little to be innovative in Software.

The same cannot be said of innovation in pharmaceuticals.

From the article:

"They (those in favour of Software Patents) argue that intellectual property rights provide incentives for companies to innovate and invest in research and development."

What i'm saying is, that in my opinion, this argument is void because it is possible to innovate in Software without any considerable investment in anything other than your own time.

Re:Why Innovation Is Stifled

[Pecisk]

...and my pick is that copyright and trademark laws are very well designed to protect intelectual property in software world. Patents only makes things worse, it is thing only loved by lawyers.

New motivation to drop IT completely

[Pecisk]

I was looking for slow transformation to be a musician and record producer (at least no one can patent certain sounds), but this will quicken my farevell. Guess what...another industry killed by greedy corporations. Yeah, money it is all that matters. Who cares about healthy, free market? Fuck it.

Sorry about my rant, it is just really sad.

Re:Sigh

[pesc]

The only argument Stallman makes is that patents should not be overly broad.
No, he argues why authors (of text or software) are not helped by patents. And why patents (monopolies) hinders development for authors.

This does not mean the amature programmer has to suffer. Free and Open Source Software can continue to produce new and innovative things, just like amatures do in automobile, aerospace, radio and other industries already covered by international patents.

FOSS authors have already been threatened by patent holders even when the FOSS authors fully own the copyright on their own code and has not pirated any code. By allowing software patents, software authors lose the right to their own work. And unlike "mature" industries, the software author can reach a large audience on the internet, competing with big business. Of course big business will use their patent monopolies to censor independent authors if they threaten their bottom lines.

Personally, I'd like to see the copyright system not be applied to software.
So that everyone could pirate any software they liked? Windows, Photoshop, etc?
Or so that M$ could rip off any independent developer and include their code in Windows without having to pay any royalties? Please explain.

The kind of argument Stallman makes about patents not being a good fit for literature can also be made for why copyright is not a good fit for automobiles or planes.

Well, copyright is not appropriate for automobiles and planes. What is your point?

EU

[Jaysyn]

Q: What does the EU & the USA have in common.

A: They are both wholly owned subsidiaries of Big Business.

Jaysyn

Re:Seen amateurs selling...

[koi88]

No, but they {amateurs} do spark innovation. Is every car being sold painted black?

Yes, amateurs ARE important. But when they start posing a threat for the heavyweights, they try to crush them.
And they usually succeed. Software patents is just another weapon for them.

I'll give an example: Have you heard of the Tucker, a car way ahead of its time?

From the website The Tucker Club: Preston Tucker was a car-crazy kid who hung around auto speedways and grew up to create an automobile--the Tucker--that was years ahead of its time. ... It was streamlined, futuristic and fast--the car every American dreamed of owning, at a price most people could afford. A man of endless enthusiasm, Tucker publicized his model all over the country to wild acclaim. He sold stock, set up a factory . . . and then the auto industry launched a devastating anti-Tucker campaign.