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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.'"
If you're going to steal comments from Previous Articles, you could at least copy the formatting properly. Stop abusing the moderation system.
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."
If you're from the US - your software industry gets a huge subsidy from Europe.
If you're from India/China - your software industry loses a big potential competitor (europe).
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.
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).