Slashdot Mirror
British Government Comes Out Against 'Pure' Software Patents
uglyduckling writes "The British Government has issued a response to a recent petition calling for 'the Prime Minister to make software patents clearly unenforcible'. The answer is reassuring but perhaps doesn't go far enough, and gives no specific promises to bring into line a patent office that grants software patents (according to the petition) 'against the letter and the spirit of the law'. The Gowers Review that it references gives detailed insight into the current British position on this debate, most interestingly recommending a policy of 'not extending patent rights beyond their present limits within the
areas of software, business methods and genes.'"
The government response is not reassuring. Read the wording of the response again. They are careful not to deny the dangerous distinction that they have been maintaining between "pure" software and software which is implemented to achieve a "technical effect". It is the same sneaky "backdoor" that the UK and EU Patent Offices have been using to allow what most intelligent observers would call "software patents". Even worse, the response makes it clear they are proposing to implement the recommendations on patent law. That will be precisely the occasion for approving the "technical effect" ruse under the guise of an official scheme supposedly merely to "clarify" existing patent law and to "limit" the applicability of patenting.
To have that sort of buffer...it would be nice...Here at home the big companies just write the actual legislation...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
A crisis point is coming over the EU soon anyway. It's traditional supporters have turned against further integration recently and while most in Britain still have token support for the EU there is more and more annoyance with the level of infringement things like Maastricht allow.
Fact is most of the British population still think we signed up to a free trade zone rather than what the EU now is.
We need a system that protects and promotes innovation.
No. We need a system that promotes innovation. If protecting is part of that, so be it, but the goal should never be protection.
Well, when i was in school they taught WordPerfect, because that's what the workforce used.
Once i actually grew up and got a job, WordPerfect was nowhere to be seen and everyone was using word.
When the current generation of schoolkids start work, who knows what they will be using?
That's why it's important to teach kids in a vendor neutral function oriented way (that is, teach them how to use a word processor (and other apps) in general, what the common options are and what they do, and how to find them on different programs instead of making them dependant on the exact layout in a single program)...
and refer to spreadsheets as spreadsheets instead of "excel spreadsheets"
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Except that patents only provide financial benefits to big corporations. If a small company or individual has a patent that a big company wants, the big company will simply use the patent without paying licensing, and if the patent owner challenges them in court, they'll be bankrupted before the case is over.
On the flipside, big companies claim patents on obvious things like double clicks on hand held devices, one click purchases, digitally timeshifting recordings, etc. and can defend these obvious patents in court because they have deep pockets.
If the patent system is going to help spur innovation it needs to prevent deep pockets from being able to abuse the patent system, and right now it's failing at that.
Who wrote this? Kudos for starting the petition, but folks! Its hard enough to get a relevant response out of a politician at the best of times, without asking them if they have stopped beating their wives.
No political advisor worth their salt is going to let their charge tacitly support that unneccesary little swipe at... who could it be?... tacked on to a not-directly-related issue. Any slim chance of getting a politician to respond directly to the issues raised (instead of the sort of bland re-statement of policy seen here) goes straight out of the window.
The patent issue is a lot wider and deeper than our favorite convicted monopolists... who risk Mutually Assured Destruction by last-century's favorite convicted monopolist (and others) if they finally stop the FUD bombardment and launch their missiles at Linux. Darn, that's another metaphor not to try on a politician at the moment :-)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
hahaha! I'm a web developer. I still have to use office tools, as I work in a fucking OFFICE. I'm not a shill - I have tried to use OO in lieu of MS Office, and each time I try, I've had to stop very quickly. It is fine for opening documents and printing them (but then so is the free Word document viewer), but as soon as you try to save something, it'll fuck up for everyone else. Not to mention the whole Calc debacle. Learning generic tools of the trade, as office suites are, is essential. They're not just for secretaries and assistants. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your "Microsoft = bad" ideology.