Slashdot Mirror
EU Closer To Rejecting Software Patents
niekko writes "BusinessWeek is reporting on the hot subject of European software patent directive. 'The European Parliament moved Tuesday toward rejecting a proposed law creating a single way of patenting software across the European Union, officials said -- a move that would effectively kill the legislation since lawmakers do not plan to set forth a new version.'"
are available over at Groklaw.
A more likely eventual route to "harmonisation" allowing software patents could be through decisions of a proposed Community-wide Patent Court, if the EU ever manages to agree to set the thing up.
The CPC has been a long-standing goal of the EU system for a long time.
An admirable goal, but one that is not compatible with the goal of disallowing pure software patents. Software is already patentable in the UK*. If the amended directive doesn't pass, then we're still fucked, meanwhile the same people behind the EU legislation will quietly lobby the remaining governments of Europe, so that each nation passits its own swpat-enabling laws.
The combined citizenship of the EU is barely able to stave off the CIID. Once the sponsors of the legislation work behind the scenes on individual governments, we'll have no hope.
* possibly making an ASS out of U and ME here
Um. What? Eire may be "business friendly" (read: corrupt as hell), but we are definitely IN the EU, right down to the silly monopoly money.
Taken from Groklaw:
The amendments FFII view as most important are the amendments to Articles 3, 4.1, 4.2, 5.2 and 6a. By the way, FFII says that MEPS are apparently no longer reading email about the directive. You can only reach them in Strasbourg by phone or fax.
Actually, I think the best thing would be for the directive to be passed with the 21 cross-party amendments (read more about the Buzek-Rocard-Duff amendments here: http://wiki.ffii.org/AmPlenPr050701En and here: http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/europarl0309/amends05 /komprom0506.en.pdf)
Failing that we want a rejection of course...
I still don't understand much of these laws. They seem stupid and dumb to me, designed to protect the rich corporations, not people.
/.er post as being gospel. There's far too much religion and ignorance thrown around on here to be taken very seriously.
Yes.... you don't understand the laws so you misinterpret them.
First, look up the basic definitions like those found at Merriam Webster or Dictionary.
Patents, by definition, give the patent holder a limited monopoly (for a given period of time) on making, selling, or using the thing that he has a patent on.
They aren't supposed to be given for things that are "obvious" or are already known or common practice. For example, I couldn't patent the PB&J sandwich because of prior art (they've been made by pretty much everyone for a long time. Likewise, something "easy and stupid" shouldn't be patentable.
The knee-jerk reaction that most people think is that "patents make me not able to do something that Microsoft has patented". What they seldom think is "my patent keeps Microsoft from running away with my ideas and leaving me out in the cold with nothing for my efforts". The former is basically the bottom-feeders' arguments. Someone has come up with something, the bottom-feeder wants to be able to take someone else's ideas and do it as well and, perhaps, gain by it. They then claim it "stifles invention". It wasn't their idea in the first place and yet they want to benefit from it (by simple use or even financially).
Take the company I currently work for. The owner had an idea and patented it himself. He then created a small business to realize his ideas. The patent is protecting his ideas for himself to benefit from. Without a patent, as soon as he published the idea in any form, anyone would be able to take the ideas and incorporate them into their own products (particularly a large company like Microsoft who could throw 100s of times the money at the problem) and leave him without any compensation for his original ideas.
What you read on Slashdot is, more often than not, the opinion of people who have no patents and who have never had any exposure to patents other than from the bottom-feeder perspective. Such people see ideas that some company has in their products that they want to duplicate for their OSS project and claim that patents are evil because they can't take those ideas and give them out freely (which could deprive the original owner of benefit from his ideas). Basically, like many they want the benefits for free... including not having the cost of having to think of something themselves.
Patents are not a bad thing unless they are abused. The US Patent Office has made some mistakes in the past but they seem to be ready to clean up any problems they make, when informed of the mistake. Also, the term of patents is too long for software patents simply because of the nature of software. If software patents were granted for, say, 3 years instead of the 17 years as they are now, then there would probably be less issue.
Beware of assuming that anyone (including myself) who posts on slashdot knows anything about what they are talking about. Look up things for yourself and understand the issues instead of just taking any random
it is the big business/pro sw patent interests that are now acting to defeat the bill. they are doing this because it suits them better to game the individual nations' patent systems then to accept a watered-down proposal. they want it all, now.
this is not the end of sw patents in europe, it's just a continuation of business as normal...
sum.zero
I have highlighted the outright lies with italics:
Remember, the words "technical contribution" are lawyerly weasel-words that allow an otherwise invalid patent to be approved.
I believe that claims that the consultation was wide-ranging and balanced have been debunked elsewhere. It was done with about the same fairness as the survey the Home Office put out, that shows that most people are in favour of ID cards.
The page goes on in this way; further analysis can be found here, here, and here.
Don't feel too safe! My guess is that a large number of patent lobbyists run amok tonight in Strassburgh...
I will believe the rejection of the directive when I see it - not a single moment before.
This is not true. Normally, the directive would go into conciliation and come back in better shape after a while as a compromise of the parliament and the council.
However, the EU commission promised through a letter today that they would comply entirely with the Parliament, that is, if the Parliament ammends the directive, they would accept the ammendments, and if the directive was to be rejected, they wouldn't touch the issue anymore.
Maybe they're afraid of ending up in the same way the EU council did: being accused of treason...
Tonnerre
Allowing software patents on national level is impossible because of the European Patent Convention.
Tonnerre
As an independant developper I just want to be able to write code (without looking at other's code) and not to be afraid of legal pursuit.
I just want to do what I like to do in peace. I don't have the resources to fight anything in the tribunals.
I hope that the big guy will not win. Please !!!!
The patent directive was rejected! 640 votes for rejection, 18 against rejection!
Trolling is a art!
Just to round of the thread, the actual vote against software patents was 648-14 with 18 abstentions. http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006& sid=a.QckuA8V3H8&refer=home
``We buried a bad law and did so without flowers,'' Eva Lichtenberger, a member of the parliament from Austria's Green party, told reporters.