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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.'"
So, I'd like to ask: How can citizens of non-European nations help support the efforts to fight Software Patents there?
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
As others have pointed out, they'll try again and again, and they only have to win once. We have to win every time.
Once established (as in the USA) it will never be reversed, because then that would be "stealing" from the companies that own all the patents.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There should not be a market for ideas. There can be a market for a specific implementation of an idea, but the whole fight now is the absurdity that is patenting ideas. Allow specific methods or implementations, but weed out the over-generalized patents. That and shorten the patent time for tech related patents, as the effective useful lifetime is much shorter than other fields.
Now, we don't have inventors creating patents, we have lawyers doing it, with no regard to actually develop their ideas. They are content to sit back and sue someone for implementing what they were too unskilled to do.
The typical modus operandi of U.S. software companies is this. Figure out a clever way to do something with software. Protect the method with patents. Aggressively sue anyone who builds anything similar. Then overhype and overprice your product and sell it to the world. When people in Bangladesh or Turkey or Egypt use pirate copies of the software because they can't afford the full U.S. dollar price, send the local branch of the BSA to break down their doors and lecture everyone about piracy = theft. Or something like that. The price never comes down however. Its always the full U.S. price.
I don't think the software industry deserves patent protection, frankly. All it does is create a predictable one way flow of money to the U.S. The EU is right to challenge software patents.
Trade secrets ARE the bridge position!
It's worldwide protection, it's free, it's instant cover and if your internal inventions are truely inventive then nobody else will think of them.
SAP can have its protection and still keep an open competitive market, there is no need to lock other European companies out of SAP's market to protect SAP's inventions.
On the other hand, if you are forced to patent before your competitor does, you reveal your secrets to every competitor in the world, even ones not excluded by your patent. They can then use your patent (and your competitors patents too) in their products in their markets to their advantage.
If SAP truely have inventions then they will benefit more from a software patent free Europe.
> > Software patents are not an inherently bad idea.
> Yes, they are. Patents are for inventions.
In the USA they're justified (or rationalized) in the Constitution as a way of promoting "progress in the useful arts". In practice they sometimes work only as a mechanism for extortion.
For example, in the USA public health is held hostage to the profits of the drug companies. They claim that they have to charge a lot of money to fund their research, but various sources keep reporting that they actually spend 10x on advertising what they spend on research. That advertising is paid for by the scalpers' rate you pay for the drugs, which of course they can only get away with due to the patents.
And there's other curious stuff going on. Claritin was formerly a prescription drug, but when its patent ran out it suddenly became an over-the-counter drug and insurance companies quit covering the cost. Meanwhile a new patent was taken out for Clarinex, a very similar product (see molecular structure diagrams at the links), and moved into the prescription/insurance niche formerly held by Claritin.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If the software patent people are going to push an extreme agenda, in the hope of achieving a 'bridge position', isn't it time to push for a winding back of all patents? Make the pro-patent lobby so busy protecting their existing position that they will be thankful that they end up with just a lack of software patents.
Not to mention the belief they are trying to foster that there must be some kind of happy medium in this case. It's like asking if you'd like to burn at 1000 degrees for an hour, and when you say no, they decide there must be some middle ground you can agree on, say 30 minutes?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Alternatively, let's allow software patents, but for a much shorter time period, say five to eight years from when you release your product/standard. I don't think it's fair that something like LZW expired only like a few years ago in the US.
And yes, I understand "fairness" is arbitrary and doesn't usually exist. Go jerk your knee at something else.
You might like to read up on this one:
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http://news.ft.com/cms/s/99610a50-7bb2-11da-ab8e-
EU implemented a database IP right to encourage production of databases, USA didn't. USA ended up with many more databases than EU. It didn't suddenly flip, we didn't wake up one morning and EU was far behind, it was a slow and steady change, more companies in the USA could enter the market, leading to more successes and slow competitive shift to the USA.
How the EU can call itself democratic is mystery to me.
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The "EU Software Patent Directive" for me was the first time where I followed its way through the different EU instances:
1. The comission introduces the directive. This version allows unlimited software patentability
2. The directive is serverly amended during the 1st reading of the parliament (in effect disallowing software patents and patents on business processes alltogether)
3. Now it gets funky: The commission pulls the directive and presents the orgininal version to the EU council as a "compromise"
4. Now begins a series of attempts that seem fit for any small banana-republic: The directly is placed last-minute on the agenda of the "farming and fishing" council. We have to thank Poland to block this attempt.
5. After some more pushing and shuffing the directive is added as "A-Item" to the agenda of a meeting of the EU council (A-Item means: No further discussion necessary).
6. The "compromise" is accepted over the objections of some of the council's members and in disregard of the parliament. Now the parliament needs the absolute majority to amend the directive (remember this a version almost identical to the original version introduced by the comission)
7. There are various attempts by JURI to restart the process... All of which are denied.
8. Now the parliament faces a dilemma: The majority needed is relative to all the seats, not the number of MEP who actually show up (which is typically less than 50%).
9. The only way out for the parliament is to block the directive *before* the actual reading... Which, now encouraged by the patent-lobby (they could not have another amended version disallowing software patents), is what happened.
(More information here: http://swpat.ffii.org/news/recent/index.en.html#c
Now we were to supposed to celebrate this as some kind of democratic victory.
The only elected body of the EU is the parliament. The results of the 1st reading in the parliament should have been the final word.
The patent lobby is trying with all possible means to push software patents, past the fact that it will hurt EU business (most patents are owned by US and Japanese companies), past the general objection the parliament voiced...
And... What we all new would happened after the parliament was coerced into blocking the directive alltogether: The next attempt.
They will try until they succeed; bringing in new directives, retracting them if they do not like the amendments by the parliament, until they get lucky once. Then we'll have unlimited software patents in the EU, which will guarantee legal monopolies and hence guaranteed revenue streams to the owners of trivial patents.
The likes of SAP and Nokia and all others who fund or participate in the pro software patent lobby would do well to look past the next few quarters of revenue, and see that there is much more money to lose in the long run.
(Just look at Microsoft/Eolas, RIM (blackberry), etc, etc, etc)
We'll find companies building patent arsenals to fend of patent claims of competitors with "cross-licensing-deals", which of course is ultimately doomed once we establish so called "patent trolls" on Europe as well (companies that have no business other then sueing for patent infringment).
If government bodies like the EPO don't have to follow legislation, why should citizens?
I'll agree with this. When was the last time we said "I invented a new way to subit data through an asynchronous XML stream to the server using Javascript?" Or "look what technique I invented?"...
Myself and just about everyone else I know simply say things to the effect "look what I discovered..." or "I finally discovered how to boost performance of our database by 200% by doing x and y"... or "I finally solved the problem.". "Solved", to a lesser extent, implying discovery and not invention.
However, we might not say "I discovered the IC chip and transister" but "[someone] invented the IC chip" or "[someone] invented the transister". Things like the internet are not discovered, we don't say "DARPA discovered the internet" we say things like "Al Gore invented the Internet".
My point being, when we speak of software solutions we usually use the term "discovered a solution" implying that the solution was always there waiting to be discovered, also implying by "solution" that it isn't an invention, but a discovery.
But in a world where a gene can be patented, I hold little hope that anyone with significant persuasion power to understand. I'm not talking about the masses, because in general, we appear to be relatively powerless. I'm talking about the lobby.
A good "bridge" would be no patents at all. Let the market remain free an unincumbered by artificial monopolies and thought, expression, and further discovery. Isn't that how we got here in the first place? Why do we need patents when we did just fine without them in the first place?
Thanks,
Leabre