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EU Patent Wars to Resume
replicant108 writes "Ciaran O'Riordan of the FSFE gives a concise analysis of why the EU Software Patent Wars will resume this winter. Apparently the pro-patent side have changed their strategy — this time they plan to bypass the legislative powers and target the judiciary instead. The goal is to transfer power from the national courts (which often rule against software patents) to a specially-created European Patent Court which will be controlled by the pro-software patent EPO!"
Perhaps. Don't think it would be all that popular though.
While I'm quite strongly against software patents, my opposition isn't quite as great as my opposition to being unemployed and ineligible for unemployment benefit.
Indeed!
Clearly "legal strategy" patents are essential - after all, without legal strategy patents lawyers couldn't own their own discover-... idea-.. inventions.
Then there would be no driving economic force behind legal innovation, and the entire legal industry would stagnate, retarding the progress of the Unites States/Europe and ensuring that legal development only took place in other countries...
No, wait-
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
The depressing thing with your strategy is that, even if it works, it will set us a generation behind. This is also the sort of thing that will have the US/Europe fall behind Asia in these areas.
The other obvious thing to point out is that patents were made to advance civilization and promote progress - largely w/o protection of patents, look how far the computer software industry has advanced. I could make a good case this would not be so if patent were around raising the bar of entry (actually, look at Universities - they are the forebearers of progress and are, er, were mostly open in research). It becomes obvious then that the reason for software patents is not to promote progress, but to protect corporations (corporate protectionism). Any politicians considering this should just be thrown out immediately by their electorate. There is absolutely no excuse to promote them. They literally want to suppress the little guy without an extensive patent portfolio to "cross-license" with the big boys.
Socialism at it's best. History is repeating itself, types of government have ceased to matter (democracy, socialist, communist), corporations/money run the place.
The original poster is talking about the difference between civil law countries and common law countries. In common law countries, the courts create common law that is every bit as binding as legislative law. In civil law countries, the courts are only supposed to enforce the laws of the legislature and are not supposed to formulate their own laws. The US is a common law country, while most of the EU are based on the civil law system.
I was actually quite careful to demonstrate a sense of proportion.
We are talking about a legal mechanism that determines whether human software engineers are free, or not free, to develop software.
There is no co-existence.
Either these people are free, or they are not (they must ensure they have permission from patent holders).
Which world do you prefer?
A world in which some people may control what algorithms other people are or are not permitted to utilise in their software (even if they typically independently reinvent them), or a world in which people are free to develop software without any need to obtain anyone else's permission?
As to dealing with this issue, I am indeed proposing how to do so.