EU Software Patent Argument to Reopen?

pryonic writes "The Register is reporting that the EU software debate may be reopened by the Internal Markets Commissioner Charlie McCreevy. He has unveiled a public consultation on 'future action in patent policy to create an EU-wide patent system can take account of stakeholders needs.'" More from the article: "Both individuals and businesses are invited to contribute to the consultation which will run until 31 March. In launching the initiative McCreevy said that the European Commission wants to make the single market for patents 'a reality.' He urged individuals and businesses to give their views on how that could be achieved." Groklaw has commentary on this development as well.

Comments

You must STOP it now, we couldn't in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

You MUST STOP SOFTWARE PATENTS NOW. We could not in the US and look at the mess we are in.... Do whatever it takes to talk with your representatives, MPs, etc. Get a good, solid dialog going and put this to bed.

Re:You must STOP it now, we couldn't in the US

[El_Muerte_TDS]

We tried and succeded, or at least, until 2007. It just won't stay dead.
One "yes" and we're screwed. One "no" and we'll have to repeat it over and over and over again until hell freezes over (or we until we say "yes", whatever comes first).

Single market = OK

[mtenhagen]

The goal of creating a single patent system for europe is not a bad thing in itself. But they should start with the lowest dominator instead of trying to make "everything" patentable.

Lets hope they've learned something from the previous attempt and they will go for a clear patent systems that only allows "real" inventions.

But I honestly dont think that the big money will accept a more strict patent system. So we need to keep the politicans aware of what the citizens think!

Surprise surprise.

[gasmonso]

Is it any surprise that the issue hasn't gone away? Look at the two major supporters for software patents...Microsoft and Sun. They are just using their power and influence to dictate policies that favor them. What I found amusing is this... "The bill had been supported by the European pro-patent lobby, which included corporations such as Microsoft and Sun, who claimed that the directive would encourage investment in research and development in Europe." Sure it would encourage investment....from large companies like MS and Sun. They of course will reap most of the benefits aswell. Software patents are a bad idea and stifle creativity.

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Solving things for good

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there a way to actually solve this kind of stuff, e.g., the decision has been made that there will be no software patents, so please quit trying at least for a generation?

From what I see the people who will benefit from this stupidity just keep lobbying until they get what they want, no matter how many times they heard a "no" along the way.

Single market, with a twist.

[vik]

Here's a novel idea. Instead of all the countries in the EU changing their patent law to include software patents, why doesn't the US prohibit software patents? Seems a better way of making a single market to me.

Vik :v)

Stakeholders need?

[spyfrog]

"create an EU-wide patent system can take account of stakeholders needs."

Why do I have a strong suspicion that the biggest stakeholder, the public, won't matter when it comes to decision?

Re:Stakeholders need?

[Jtheletter]

Why do I have a strong suspicion that the biggest stakeholder, the public, won't matter when it comes to decision?

The replies to your comment thus far are focusing on the semantics of your statement, and it is true that politicians, etc tend to warp words like 'stakeholder' to mean what they want, but I think you are absolutely correct in this.

The public in a "free" society is supposed to be the largest stakeholder, as they have both the largest numbers (population) and also the most at stake - i.e. companies may come and go but the public will have to deal with these regulations long after Company XYZ that influenced the debate has gone belly up. This seems to be largely lacking in both US and EU politics these days, lamentably. Politicians have tuned their ears to listen very closely to the players that are taking them out for nice lunches, or golfing, or are old industry buddies, but very little mind seems to be given to the masses who grant their representatives power to represent THEM first and foremost. That voice of the public may not be as loud, or constant, or enticing as that of coporate lobbyists, but it shouldn't have to be! It should be the FIRST consideration, all other influences taking a far second. Politicians shouldn't expect the public to give them input on every decision in the same way that a lobbyist who is paid fulltime to do that will. Note that I am not saying that people don't or shouldn't tell their representatives how they'd like to be represented, but I fear the constant hum of corporate influence overshadows the relatively few citizens who do make their views known. Really though, they shouldn't have to, their representative should be ASKING them, actively seeking out their opinions, then IF THEY HAVE TIME, they can listen to lobbyists whose interests are important, yes, but very secondary to the public good (I do understand laws that affect corps therefore affect the public who work for them, but there is currently an imbalance in policy making of which group's opinion counts for more). That's how it should be, alas I have little hope that this will ever occur. Perhaps under major reforms to all of our government systems.

The point is the first and foremost question on all lawmakers minds should be 'What is best for the PEOPLE?' and then working from there accomodate coporations and sepcial interests without compromising the position of those they are supposedly representing.

Re:Stakeholders need?

[gr8_phk]

From the original post: "future action in patent policy to create an EU-wide patent system can take account of stakeholders needs."

Patents are not supposed to have anything to do with "stakeholders". They need to go back and look at the justification for having patents in the first place. You won't find any reference to "stakeholders needs".

In the US, the stated purpose is (my words here) to promote dissemination of ideas - you get a limited term monopoly in exchange for disclosing to the public how your invention works. What they have come to be in practice is quite different. Some people would say we need to harmonize the rules to accepted practice, but that doesn't agree with the justification for having patents in the first place. There aren't too many things where a patent actually explains something that can't be figured out by looking at the actual implementation.

I think I just figured out the problem with our "non-obvious" requirement. You can argue about weather something was obvious before it existed, but the purpose of patents is to encourage disclosure to the public how something works or is made. This implies that it needs to cover something that is not obvious even after the public has access to the invention. A good example would be the recent methods for making diamonds - having one does not tell you how to make one. Another example would be the recipe for Coke, but they like to keep that a trade-secret. By offering Coke a patent, we'd all get to find out how to make it (legally in 20 years) but instead they keep it a secret - which has worked equally well for them without any term limit. When shown a one-click shopping cart on the web, most anyone with a little programming skill and HTML knowhow can replicate it - hence not patentable. Slick new algorithms... Hmmm. Perhaps. Ones that can be figured out easily with a disassembler - no. Basically if you need to read the patent to know how to do something then it's probably patentable based on the original justification for having them. Otherwise not. OK, so I'm dreaming...

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

EU to the people: We're going to keep pushing patents until we get what we want.

(And you know what, I've seen enough of this crap to believe they're going to get it.)

Re:To McCreevy

[arivanov]

No. EC is built according to the french civil service model: "We know better and we are not accountable to anyone".

IIRC, For the time being there is no procedure to impeach or remove one specific commissioner via any of the elected bodies.

How much money would IBM have?

[brlewis]

If IBM could have patented software from the get-go, I'm sure they would dominate the market. However, it would be a much smaller market. See quotes against software patentability.

Re:Charlie McCreevy

[sp3tt]

Someone had to say it, sooner or later. Patents are a monopoly privilege. They have no place in a free economy.

the U.S. software patent mess

[brlewis]

do you actually have a single concrete example of why software patents are sooooooooo bad

That's a really tough question. Picking a single example is not easy since there are so many good ones. Maybe you can help. Start with the LPF's examples to get you the "best of" through 2002. Then read up on the whole Blackberry/email mess. After that maybe we'll have to roll dice or something to pick a single one.

Re:the U.S. software patent mess

[o'reor]

And don't forget to read the lengthy but enlightening paper by Cristian Miceli.

If you don't have enough time to read it all, please, do read the interesting parts about Divx Networks, Autodesk and Adobe, and the testimonies of their representatives, on how they had to divert a considerable amount of money and human resources towards the software patents arms race, intead of using these resources on innovative projects.

These are real, solid examples of the disaster of software patents in the US.

Re:Charlie McCreevy

[trollable]

Not really. The parlement is quite representative, the commission is not. But the first one, that has not so much power, seems quite independant from the second. That said, the parlement has of course politicians from all parties so some may agree sometimes with the commission. Nothing wrong. The problem is really the commission that is 1) not elected 2) hos most of the decision power 3) is widely subject of influence and lobbying.

Re:What?

[Simon Brooke]

Sure it would encourage investment....from large companies like MS and Sun. They of course will reap most of the benefits aswell. Software patents are a bad idea and stifle creativity.

Listen, I understand your point, but you haven't made it here. All you've done is try to vilify MS and Sun, and that may get you karma, it doesn't explain why you think...

A serious point is that both Microsoft and Sun are both US companies. Like other US companies, they already have a huge bank of software patents which, if Europe adopted software patents, would instantly become enforcible here. European companies by and large don't have significant portfolios of software patents, so could not cross license and would be forced to pay large fees to use basic techniques which have been commonplace in the industry for years.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of software patents, it isn't in Europe's strategic interest to adopt them.

Do us a favour and STFU

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

If people want to try to kill software patents, don't try to discourage them! Given how poorly software patents did last round, it is certainly possible that software patents will be abolished across the EU.

Patent protest in Washington DC

[Micah]

IMHO ...

Americans can get involved here by organizing a patent protest in the Capital Mall. Get as many programmers together as possible with as many exhibits of how software patents have harmed innovation as possible. Have a march, get the public's attention.

Maybe, just maybe, it will get the attention of someone in power in the US (to fix the issue) and/or someone in power in the EU (to warn them of what could happen).

The biggest problem would be actually getting people there. I, for example, would love to go to such a demonstration, but practically probably could not.

what part

[BBird]

I have to asl the obvious...

What part of NO do they don't understand?

Re:Make it a Europe vs. U.S. issue

[RexRhino]

Except the economics of the issue is that Eurpean corporations don't want to reject software patents, and then have the U.S. own all the good software patents (the economy is global, and America is a huge market with incredable political power... so U.S. software patents have a great effect on the world even if Europe doesn't recognize them).

The movement towards software patents in Europe is not being pushed by American corporations, it is being pushed by European corporations and people who have the very same paranoid anti-American you are trying to promote. European companies think "We are going to get crushed by the Americans if they can use software patents to make money, and we can't... we need to make strong IP laws and get our share of that software patent pie".

Could we get organised?

[startling]

I'm sure many of us in the UK have written to our MPs and MEPs, among other things, but I'm not aware of any specific UK organisation coordinating ventures to stop these patent shenanigans.

Do any other UK slashdotters feel like getting in touch to see what could be achieved collectively? You know: email, website, forum, PR activites, that sort of thing. There's such a lot of strong opinion about this; maybe a concerted campaign could achieve more than individual efforts?

Laissez-Faire Capitalism

[Z34107]

This is retarded, but I'll bite:

1. Nobody is getting "screwed" by oil companies - consumers, gas stations, or anyone. Given the quantity of crude available and the demand for it, the price per barrel becomes exactly the price at which every barrel can be sold - no more, no less. If they charged any more per barrel - above this equilibrium - they'd have surplusses building up. If they charged any less, all the crude would be immediately bought up with people clamoring for more (at that price), and there would be shorages. Despite any propaganda about "record profits", the industry is competitive and the laissez-faire free market reaches a price so that there are neither shortages nor surpluses of crude at the going rate.
2. Gas stations overcharging you? A basic requisite for laissez-faire capitalism is the enforcement of the contract - in this case, the contract being for you to buy so many gallons at x price per gallon. The owner of the gas station obviously breached this contract by, in effect, charging you more than x. Hence, one of the legitimate functions of government under laissez-faire capitalism is the enforcement of contracts, so that issues like this do not occur.
3. You'll find homeless people in (mostly) capitalist America, socialist Germany, or (mostly) communist China. In fact, homelessness predates capitalism. All the homeless people "nowadays" were not forcefully evicted from their utopian dwellings by the free market - in fact, the opposite is often true. Price ceilings on apartment rents in New York, for example, force an apartment to go for a fraction of its value in an attempt to provide more affordable housing for people. In reality, it discourages people from building more apartments, and thus solving the problems of both price and quantity of housing. It also creates a shortage of housing - what only a handful of people may have wanted at $550/month, many will want at $200/month. Since no one will produce apartments knowing they will only get a fraction of their value in return, and even more people will now want apartments, interference with the market actually causes homelessness, not vice versa.

4. I will give you, however, that the Great Depression is a rather good argument against laissez-faire capitalism, although you hardly touch on it. I would argue that the Great Depression was not caused by market failure or some fundamental flaw in capitalism, but in the general naivete of the public at the time. People believed that stock prices had reached a "permenantly high plauteu", which fueled the purchase of stocks on credit (often, an investor had to pay only 10% of a stock's value up front). If people had the same knowledge of capitalism then as we do now, no-one would beleive that stocks can somehow remain at permanently elevated prices, and therefore, no one would provide the insane amounts of credit that caused loan defaults and bank failures when the market faltered.