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

Re:Did anyone expect anything else than this?

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

If people stopped consuming protected media, including songs from iTunes, it would make a difference.

In fact, businesses looking for a niche market in the entertainment business could get in and make it big by selling non-protected media, and marketing it as such.

Retaliation: GPL should be changed...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to explicitely forbid the use of GPL'ed software for public institutions in countries where software patents are enforced.

Sigh

[QuantumG]

The only argument Stallman makes is that patents should not be overly broad. You don't see broad patents in the automobile, aerospace or pharmacutical industries because people actually challenge patents in those industries. In the software industry we just tend to roll over when a lawyer even sneezes in our general direction. Why? Because the software industry is made up of fly-by-night companies that can't afford to put up a legal fight, let alone produce a stable product. If our industry is ever to mature we have to learn to let go of the status quo and embrace change. 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.

Personally, I'd like to see the copyright system not be applied to software. 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.

Re:A constant battle

[kcbrown]

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.

Once a battle like this is lost in any one location, then the war is lost in that location.

Don't believe me? Look at the state of copyright around the globe. It has been monotonically increasing over time. Not once that I've ever heard of have we seen a reduction in copyright strength or an increase in the rights of the general public.

And not once has a location gained software patents only to lose them again.

I agree, if we lose in the EU it doesn't mean we've lost completely, but it does mean we've lost completely in the EU.

If the EU adopts software patents (and I guarantee they will -- it's only a matter of time and money), there will be precious few places left in the world where one is truly free to write software.

Not that such a trend would be in any way out of character with the overall trend the entire world is following: a descent into an oppressive global police state in which the masses are only given the illusion of freedom.

DMCA, patent law, the war for oil ...

[blankslate]

I for one hope some enterprising freedom fighters destroy the USA entirely, before it can further contaminate the actual free world with the next round of infectious pure insanity. If we can't disassemble corporate personhood, maybe we should disassemble the populace? Viva la fucking insanity.

Re:A constant battle

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they're not free anymore, actually! You're just an idiot if you've missed the fact that things like mplayer, openoffice and firefox are illegal (or at least exist only at the whim of some MBA waving an overly broad patent) in the USA - the only reason you have them is because currently, the laws are unenforceable on the internet and projects can shelter in free europe.

Patents (not just software patents) are about people wanting to restrict what engineers can do, by definition. They are pure evil. Other industries with patents AREN'T "okay". Most are dominated by cosy oligopolies of long-entrenched multinational corporations - Lockheed-Martin, Ingersoll-Rand, etc.

ALL PATENTS should be abolished. Those who preach "free trade" while at the same time pushing for more and more patents are simply hypocrites (hi, USA!).

How about stoping your personal attacks

[Anonymous Coward]

and instead arguing your point?

Of course it's possible that the grandparent is afraid of change, so? Does that invalidade his concerns? Is this an argument in favor of software patents?

"Just to get this straight, you think that those of us in Australia and the Unitied States are not free to write software?"
No, he's thinking, and rightly so, that people living in nations where software patents exist, are not free to write software without being threatened by software patents. If you take a look at the many lawsuits about software patents in the US, you might get an idea where the problem might be.

And while I'm at it, I also had the displeasure to read your other posts and here are some answers:
"Have you considered the possibility that the people who want software patents make really good arguments and the people who don't want software patents make really stupid ones?"

If you think there are good arguments, spill them out, but don't use the kind of strawman argument you are making.

"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.. "

No, it isn't. It's some software companies calling for them, while others (and if you can believe any of the recent polls, the vast majority) are totally against them.

"That argument is dumb too cause there's amature radio enthusiests. There's amature car enthusiests. There's amature plane enthusiests. All these industries are restricted by international patents."

Sigh, since when exactly did amateur plane enthusiast work on something being in direct competition to the offerings of boing and aribus? Oh, they don't, your analogy is meaningless, stupid and misleading. Not even a nice try.

"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."

Yes, monopolies have a great track record when it comes to making something reliable and of high quality. Screw competition.
Btw., did you even notice, that with your last paragraph you essentially agreed to all the arguments of the oponents of software patents you had been arguing against all the time?

Re:How about stoping your personal attacks

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think that without patents you can't apply the results of your own research? That is rubbish. In the complete absence of a patent system, you can still do research, produce products based on that research. Only thing you can't do is stop other people producing - i.e. you'd have to compete in a free market. Patents don't give to you, they take from everyone else.

Trade secret law would not be abolished. Given reverse engineering techniques are now well-known, I'd rather a world with no patents but trade secrets - at least then we'd have a _chance_ of competing, closed source vs. open source in a free market. Patents have long stopped being disclosure of anything worthwhile - patent lawyers pride themselves on their ability to obfuscate. And software patents in particular are usually patents on the problem, not the solution, so that any solution to the problem is a patent violation.

Governments should abolish the patent system and give "inventor's grants" if they want to encourage innovation. Patents restrict the human ability to learn from others. With patents, geek efficiency is reduced to that of lower mammals.

The only I"P" right that should exist is the right to be recognised as the author/inventor/coder/etc. of something. This can exist in the complete absence of patent or copyright. That way, people know to go to you for new stuff based on your old stuff, but you have to keep making new stuff to profit, not just do the same old stuff again and again. And non-creators wouldn't be able to hold rights that allow them to control and direct creators.

Also, you seem to think people won't create for the sake of creating. You're just wrong there, at least for the European peoples.

Existing patents

[noims]

I'm looking for existing EU patents that show up the system. In his article RMS mentions patents on progress bars and accpeting payment by credit card... are there any other popular choices, or better still a page with lists of them?

Recently I've come up against one that, while I haven't read the actual text of, seems to cover downloading a file from a central authority that lists rates for several currencies, and using these rates to convert a price from a local currency to a foreign one.

Wow. I wish I'd thought of that.

Noims

Re:A constant battle

[Znork]

Right, me, Adam Smith, the father of Capitalism and two Nobel prize for Economy winning free-market capitalist supporters.

"Extremists". Sure.

I think you need to reevaluate your position a bit. And maybe study some economy instead of repeating corporate propaganda.

"It seems to me beyond doubt that in these fields a slavish application of the concept of property as it has been developed for material things has done a great deal to foster the growth of monopoly and that here drastic reforms may be required if competition is to be made to work. In the field of industrial patents in particular we shall have to seriously examine whether the award of a monopoly privilegie is really the most appropriate and effective form of reward for the kind of riskbearing which investment in scientific research involves."
(F.A. Hayek: "Free" Enterprise and Competitive Order, 1947)

Stop Apple, MS et al undermining EU SME voice.

[delire]

SME's are the hardest hit here, but as the FFII organisers suggest, SME's need to make direct contact with MEP's, ideally in Brussels itself.

Fat yet hungry wolves like Apple and Microsoft et al http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=11 649&Page=1&pagePos=11 are working hard alongside EU nationals (eg Nokia, Siemens) to falsely lobby on behalf of SME's. The case needs to be made clear to MEP's that SME's have the least to gain from swpats, and the argument needs to be economically framed in the context of the EU's stake in a global IT market. Statistics like these serve as good support material:
http://wiki.ffii.org/Bsa050609En

It's not just that there is much to lose from unbridled software patenting, so much as there is arguably much to gain from disallowing them altogether.

Personally I would have thought the moment US mega-corps become involved, would be glaring reason for MEP's to become anxious over the interests of the directive, but as they say "follow the money".. in this case off a cliff.

Stallman is more right than you think

[Christian Engstrom]

But Stallman is incorrect as well. By drafting 'literary claims' he insinuates that something like this would ever exist. That will never be the case.

There is a US firm of patent agents that are already trying to promote the idea of literary patents at http://www.plotpatents.com/ . So how can you say with such certainty that they will never exists?

Perhaps you should read up a little on the subject before you start declaring your views as absolute truths.

And yes, patents do cover ideas. That's the whole point with them. As opposed to copyright, which covers the expression of ideas.

Please feel free to Google for more background information before making you next post. Perhaps you will want to start with something that Dr. Stallman has written. He appears to be considerably more well informed on the subject than you.