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EU Gears Up for Another Patent Fight
DirkFromEurope writes "Heise Online is reporting on the Digital Europe meeting of the Progress & Freedom Foundation in Prague. From the article: 'Proponents for a broadening of industrial property rights in the computer sector have declared a new round in the fight about software patents in the EU opened. "It starts again", announced Günther Schmalz, head of SAP's software department.' Günther also 'expressed hope that his camp will be better prepared this time than during the last struggle. A "bridge position" must be reached, which both sides could live with.'"
A "bridge position" must be reached, which both sides could live with.'"
Translation for the European-newspeak-impaired:
"Bridge position" my a**. It's more like a bridgehead position."It's hard to overturn a complete rejection. Because we were afraid of a complete rejection last time, we did a strategic retreat. This time we must get our hoof inside the door, in the guise of a 'mutually satisfying compromise', so that we may then fortify our positions and lobby our way to our goal."
> I'm going to patent cooking!
That may actually be possible "if" the US patent reform bill is passed. In the name of reducing the number of lawsuits it grants the rights to first-to-patent rather than to any actual inventor, so it seems that anything not already on the books will be patentable. Cooking, the wheel, your favorite sex position...
In principle the notion of prior art should prevent this, but the notion of prior art is inherently incompatible with the proposed "first to patent" doctrine. Unless they exercise extraordinary care in the phrasing of the law, it's going to open a huge can of worms.
Why, BTW, may be a patent violation...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Software patents are not an inherently bad idea.
Yes, they are. Patents are for inventions. While software is a human invention its basis is math and algorithms. Many of the brightest mathematicians in history (and societies like the ancient Greeks, in general) consider algorithms to be "truths" which already exist. Humans simply discover them. Therefore if the basis of all software is math then computer science truely is discovery, not invention.
I'm a software developer. And I consider my "works" to be part art, part science. A patented physical invention may be sometimes considered a work of art, but not all art should be patented. The true fundamental problem is that not all creations by humans deserve a limited government-sanctioned monopoly. There's a reason the greatest inventor in American history didn't patent a single thing. He felt inventions should help society first, not the inventor.
Developers: We can use your help.
Nice ideas, but it fails to address the critical issue: why do we need software patents at all? What is currently wrong with software development that needs to be fixed by patenting software? I fail to see that one of the most vibrant and quickly developing fields of industry around has an inherent flaw in it that needs fixing by granting monopolies left and right?
As european, I can not understand this Software-Patents-Pandora's-Box redux. Everyone knows that the pro-sw-patent lobby is a deep pocket restless beast, but the previous defeatment should be respected, IMO, as there are no new arguments for a view change.
I like to recall RMS arguments related to software patents, specialy the one related to the fact that to patent sofware is quite similar to patent concepts and ideas, not implementations, thus preventing innovation. Please note that "new ideas" are usually merely linear combinations of previous concepts. True innovations are *very* rare.
Democracy is dead, replaces by capitalism. Everything is for sale to the highest bidder including your govt. Your only hope in hanging on whatever rights you have is to try and buy them.
evil is as evil does
The concept of a "Bridge Position Both Sides could live with" is a fallacy. There is no "bridge position" between software patents and no software patents. There is only yes or no and only the CEO of SAP will benefit from yes, and then only for a while.
His dialogue is disengenious this is a blatant power grab.
Here's a position I can live with: no software patents. Period. I hope that people who advocate software patents don't know what they are talking about, or else they're pure evil. Why should an algorithm be allowed to be patentable? Allowing that would make mathematical proofs patentable as well, there's no way you can get around that.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Open Source software threatens proprietary software by making software in general into a commodity. Since that means that the margins shrink drastically on the product, software companies are deathly afraid of open-source. And the cheapest way to fight it is to make it practically illegal - not by passing actual laws against open-source (I'm sure most countries will consider this some type of free speech impediment), but by creating so many patents and patent-lawsuits that only corporations can afford to create and maintain software.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.