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Software Patent Debate Over in Europe For Now?
Anonymous EPA writes "The website of the European Patent Office is running a story about a recent agreement not to revive the debate on software patents in Europe nor to promote new legislation. To quote: 'All speakers welcomed unequivocally the opportunity to discuss the issue at a high level and made clear that a new CII (computer-implemented inventions) debate followed by legal modifications was neither necessary nor desirable.'"
Looks like a small bit of sanity is left in this universe ... Go EU !
The sum of intelligence on a planet is constant. Nowadays we have more people. When classic goes away, so do I. Copy
IMHO, because software patents can still be filed in Europe, there will always be the threat of passing some kind of legislation in the future that will enforce European software patents...this danger changes forms as necessary, but does not go away.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
I can whoop ass on mudslums. I'll do it tommorow at work.
You can patent the click (Amazon)
You can patent the letter i (Apple)
You can patent a number (AACS)
You can patent software written by someone else, and then sue them for it. (Microsoft, Linux)
Awesome... awesome..
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
One of the reasons for this is quite likely that patent owners are afraid of a total ban. As it is now, they can work within national systems and get some patents. If there was an open debate, the evidence from last time is that the anti-patent lobby has by far the better arguments and might end up winning Europe wide anti-patent legislation.
The solution? We just have to work to establish more and more GPLv3 software, written in patent free countries, which uses whatever is the best technique for the job. Eventually patent based countries will not be able to compete effectively.
"A new CII debate? No thank you!"(Francisco Mingorance, BSA Europe).
They would much rather have EPO create new case law without debate and without those pesky MPs.
)9TSS
This, from one of the MEPs:
The US grants too many patents and of too low quality which are cheaper to obtain and often quite trivial.
Is there a chance that the US is stung and works on a quick overhaul of its broken patent system? I, for one, am not holding my breath.
Europe has patented the idea of having sensible patent laws!
Donald Knuth makes a far more eloquent and measured opposition to software patents than anyone else I have read on the matter. His argument is
not merely that they are a debasement of science and culture and an attempt to allow the patenting of mathematical process itself, but that they are unworkable in practice. No programmer can ever write a single line of code if they must spend time looking over their shoulder and hoping to know which methods are patented and which are not. It's simply impossible. And no PHB is going to stand behind each and every coder checking their work against a list of allowable statements and algorithms. It just won't work in practice because the PHBs are universally clueless about code, which is why they hire programmers in the first place. And do you think anybody is going to come down from the legal department and oversee the programming? Be real! And even more to the point, since most commercial code is closed source, whoever is going to disassemble and study every piece of code and be able to prove that it infringes? There aren't even enough technically qualified judges to hear the cases so decicions are arbitary insomuch as they allow the courts to save face and appear to know what they are doing. It's a complete and utter unworkable disaster from end to end.
This gives us the power, and in no small measure. Ultimately the best defence against software patents is for us not to recognise them. If every ordinary programmer (that's you and me) states clearly to a colleagues and any potential employer as a simple unbiased, unemotional matter of fact, that they do not recognise software patents the whole fucking evil game is tumbled. Nobody can force you to do the research...and nobody can afford to idemnify you against not doing the research... because no software engineering project is tenable under those conditions. Who is going to stand there and scrutinise every line of code you write? Nobody, nobody can. Try even finding people who are of sufficient skill to read through stacks of patents written in pseudo legalese and at the same time understand the code implications enough to direct a team of programmers, you won't find many.
What we need to understand is that software patents are like fairies or psychosomatic illness, they only exist to the extent you allow them to, by recognising their legitimacy. If programmers elect to not recognise software patents they will cease to exist. Just add one line to the bottom of your resume...
"I do not recognise the validity of sofware patents"
I don't beleive there's a programmer on this planet who actually supports the idea (unless they're one of the crooked ones who is already making a fortune out of patents). There are almost no legitimate (read useful) businesses that support them either. The big guys unwittingly got into an arms race that even they admit is wholly destructive and counterproductive. Given a chance the major corporations would sink software patents just to be rid of them but since they are locked in a stand-off of mutually assured destruction nobody wants to be the first to put down their weapons. The situation only persists because of money grubbing lawyers who throw fuel on the fires of conflict for their own profit. I don't believe there are many bosses or recruiters out there that care for them either, I've never heard any manager or project leader talk about them as anything but an absurd and time consuming obstacle to development. They are uniquely anti social(ist), anti-capitalist and anti-progressive.
Nobody with an iota of sanity likes or supports the idea. So who are the those who support them? No more than a very small and very vocal minority of opportunist patent troll companies who will hopefully die very quickly once their oxygen and food are cut off.
As programmers YOU have the power to bury this obscene squandering of human endeavour. Next time someone mentions software patents to you just laugh and say that nobody who is serious recognises them and that you won't tak
The cynical bastard in me thinks this sounds like they're about to sneak this legislation in as an attachment to some goat herders bill or something.
Soon it is hoped legislators and MPs in the US, Canada, and the UK will wake up and Hermione and Snape both die in the final Harry Potter book.
Europe is now a threat to national security. By not recognizing the intellectual property regime in the USA, Europe is causing economic hardship to our people. Accordingly, they should be punished. Armed fighters and bombers are headed overseas now to bomb the shit out of you until you see things our way.
One thing that I've always wondered, what about "inventions" that can be implemented in either software or hardware? What about say an algorithm that could be fixed in silicon, or written as DSP code? More and more devices are becoming firmware and middle-ware based, as an example, software radios for wireless devices. Is it the case that the underlying algorithm can be patented, but not the actual software implementation (so that someone implementing the algorithm would need permission, even for software)? It all seems weird and inconsistent to me!
I guess I'm going to have to be the one person here to defend patents...
Consider the h.264 video codec. It cost millions of dollars to develop, and is protected ONLY by software patents. Europe wants to play the prisoner's dilemma to their own advantage. They want companies in the US and Japan to keep developing high tech, leaving US customers to pay for it, so that they can use it for free themselves (and they certainly do).
Everyone knows the kind of outrage there would be if US drug companies developed multi-billion dollar treatments for major diseases, then Europe decided to just use them without paying anything. The only reason the opposite happens with software patents is that the US patent system is in such a ridiculous state that everyone laughs at it. That doesn't mean patents are bad, and doesn't mean software patents are bad.
Consider the alternatives. If software patents didn't exist in the US, the only option would be to sell a closed-source codec, and keeping the format a trade secret. This would be very, very bad. Everyone would be limited to a few supported platforms, with a poor performing codec, and no opportunity to modify or improve it. Things would be like the bad old days of RealPlayer and 4DTV.
And that's only the start of it. Reverse engineering is too easy for that strategy to work for long, so instead of one big h.264 codec, you'd see each company roll out their own codecs, with only incrementally better quality than the last, and each one being regularly obsoleted... Something similar to Yamaha's attempts at TwinVQ (predecessor of AAC) or Quicktime's use of Sorensen SVQ1/3 codecs.
You'd think I'd be of the opposite opinion, since I'm quite active in a few open source multimedia projects, but I more of a realist. For technology to be developed, someone needs to pay for it. Those who think the technology will just develop itself, whether there are any incentives or not, are unbelievably naive. The US patent system needs to be fixed, without question. But it's a terrible situation we're currently in, to have the US always picking up the tab for the rest of the world... Is it any wonder brain-drain is so much of a problem?
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The current European Parliament members have learned what soft patents mean, and know their consequences.
Hence these guys are going to crawl back under their rock and try to make themselves forgotten until after the next elections.
That'd be my take on it, too.
Alternately it's just a PR move to get everyone to drop their guard so that the pro-sw crowd (aka MS) can try fast tracking it through some agriculture and fisheries committee or other unexpected venue. It'd be a clever trick to get suckered in to giving up just as we're about to finalize the victory. So, if it's the pro-swpatent crowd saying the debate is over, I'd recommend extreme caution.
It'd be very unwise to consider the debate over until even the very possibility of sw patents has a wooden stake in it and is buried upside down at a Crossroads with garlic and holy wafers in its mouth. One way to do it would be a re-affirmation of the 1974 European Patent Convention which, in Article 52, explicitly excludes "schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers".
Currently there are parts of Europe which, rather than follow EU law, style themselves as a 51st state and take after US law instead. That occurs in spite of being member states in the EU and not in the US. Sweden, for example, is one which has a patent office promoting software patents. For that matter the European Patent Office is still granting (invalid) patents on software. Until these and the others actually start following EU law by refusing further patents on software and annulling any previously granted software patents, the danger is not reduced. If anything, complacency increases the risk.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
... I can assure you this has absolutely nothing to do with common sense or similar. It just means the hole crappy discussion will return with another name, may be something like tiny-little-puppies-petting-act. Don't get me wrong, but, as a German, I know the EU often is abused to bypass national laws, even the constitution (or "Grundgesetz", as we call it in Germany). Politicians actually build laws in Europe just to say they'd have to pass them here as the EU directed them to - the last thing we are likely to see here is common sense in scope of the EU ...
...this only means that they want to whip it through in some unrelated committee (last time they tried to push it through the fishing board) and just don't want anyone to talk about it 'til it's over.
Last time we were lucky.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The debate may be over for now at the European (i.e. EU) level, but it rages on in the UK, with recent decisions from the UK Intellectual Property Office ruling that computer program product claims are not allowable. See the following for more details:
- aerotelmacrossan.htmlp rogram-claims-at-uk-ipo.html
t op-asking-questions.html
http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2007/07/fallout-from
http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-computer-
The EPO, however, have said that they don't even want to address the questions:
http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2007/06/epo-please-s
The debate will rumble on for a while yet.
I agree with the base of your argument: there must be a way for companies to earn off of their investments. But you are assuming that software patents are the only answer. Can't this be achieved simply through copyright and licensing?
:)
Look at the GPL... It protects the code by licensing it in a specific way, so companies can't just throw it into their products without fulfilling some specific conditions. What stops the developers of a video codec from doing the same thing? They can just make a license that says the codec is free for non-commercial use, but must be licensed to be used commercially. If anybody just takes the code, that's a copyright violation.
IANAL, so if I'm way off here, let me know
The EPO is half right but it's important to understand where the situation is in Europe. The EPO grants more software patents than ever, but uses mystical jargon to disguise these so that it can claim, with a straight face, "Software cannot be patented in Europe". One of the speakers at the conference, Mr Beresford, a patent attorney, wrote a book called "How to patent software under the European Patent Convention" (since it is, strictly speaking, not allowed).
Those who want software patents and business method patents are: the patent industry, and specific software firms like Microsoft and SAP, and some consumer tech firms like Philips. The EPO is in a bind because the explosion of demand for software patents is destroying it from the inside: internal strife over the money is now breaking the EPO apart little by little.
Politically, there is a big fight between the EPO and the EU over who controls the patent system. The EU wants a Community Patent and the EPO (esp. Switzerland) has been sabotaging this because it means the end of a good business. The pro-swpat lobby has been trying to get software patents in via the back door through an EPO plan called "EPLA", but this is failing because of the EU vs. EPO fight. The UK courts meanwhile are rolling back patent law to discard pure software patents (which annoyed Mr Beresford immensely). Within the EPO, national patent interests try to weaken the EPO's management, and try to inflate the patent system so they can pump more money out of it. The EPO management gets all the flak, and lobbies hard to make friends in Brussels. MEPs are still sensitive from the Software Patent Directive, especially those who lost.
It is intensely political, and almost the only thing all parties can agree on is that it's not the right time to attack the question of software patents again. That is basically what came out of the conference.
However - this is not a closed matter. IBM recently came out on the side of the FFII (my association) with a proposal that calls for a "European Interoperability Patent", which basically is a patent that does not damage open standards and (maybe) open source. The EIP is immature and just one idea among many but it's part of IBM's realignment with the FOSS economy, and away from the old industrial economy that so loves patents.
And when IBM moves, the patent world follows.
What was most interesting from the EPO conference, and what is missing from their report, is the way the EPO is getting ready for change. With a new president - Alison Brimelow - and a huge set of problems to deal with, there is a good chance that the old EPO, which sold patents as the cure for everything will start to become a kinder, gentler kind of parasite.
Of course, the FFII, which fought against software patents from 1999 to 2005, is still here, and growing stronger. The question of how to stop the patent system from destroying the FOSS economy is still there and it will come back onto the agenda in a big way, when the time is right.
My blog
How about charging a fee for abuse of process for all the people who have applied for a SW/Business patent (broke the law, didn't they? fine 'em).
A swift influx of cash and then the death of people applying for such patents.
Part 2 would be to have a fine if a patent is rejected for technical reasons (i.e. missed prior art, technically incomplete but NOT because the form was filled in precisely correct). That'll cut down on the number of bad patents and still allow the patent offices to bring in the moolah.
Part 3 is too evil to discuss...
In "The Science of Discworld" a short story about an engineer was made. Most neural nets are made by modelling computer circuits and evolving therein. One engineer thought that maybe real circuits were doing things that were not modelled and a new idea would turn out. So he proposed to use FPGA banks instead of a computer model to produce a circuit to distinguish between a high and a low tone input. 100 transistors was the given playing field. Cannot be solved by design because no design would start without a clock that requres more than 100 transistors itself. A program as modelled by the state of the art models would maybe find a solution but barely.
It turned out that after a LOT of genetic progeny a design using 60-ish transistors was found. Some were removed by hand without changing the functionality ("Junk DNA"). Finally (IIRC) 23 transistors were connected up and a half-dozen more that weren't connected but whose removal stopped the soultion working did the job.
How? No idea. Maybe feedback loops, magnetic field loops storing energy, capacitance between charged and uncharged areas of silicon.
No program includes them (or could do so accurately).
So real life is a lot weirder than computer life and you can't tell what is going to happen IRL.
That is why software patents implemented as silicon in a real device is patentable. If someone gets the same algorithm implemented in a different form on silicon then that is a new patent (possibly derived from the original). If it were software, there is ONLY the algorithm. the code is not considered part of the patent and if it were, it's copyrighted for longer than the patent exists, so you have a patent that lasts 95 years. A messy situation however you slice it.
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Good news? I'm having a hard time making this compute....
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
This is truly a peace for our time.
They intend to try to do it without a debate.
I believe, technically, it's only if the murder occurs on EPO grounds, which are like embassies, beyond the reach of local national law. If an EPO employee committed a crime on German or Dutch soil, I believe he would be answerable to the local police. Also, an examiner gone postal would probably be arrested if he stepped outside the EPO's gates. However the independent sovereign status of the EPO does mean that its top-level staff can make a lot of money by escaping taxes; these advantages would be reduced if the EPO became an EU office. There is a lot of economic self-interest behind the politics.
There's a short summary of the EPO's origins and motives on the Digital Majority web site.
My blog
Consider a real example outside the software domain - the PAL TV system. It's a simple, but significant improvement over NTSC in that the phase of the colour subcarrier is reversed every line so that hue errors caused by phase shifts in the transmission path appear merely as desaturation. It's a clever idea, but not particularly revolutionary: the main innovation was in fact being able to produce a consumer-grade device (piezo-acoustic delay line) to make it work in practice. The system was patented and used as the basis of analogue colour TV across most of Europe. The patents were then used to prevent non-European manufacturers enter the European market (France, of course, wanted to protect its market even from other European manufacturers and adopted SECAM). Once the PAL patents expired, the formerly-protected TV manufacturers were exposed to competition from the Far East and mostly closed their European factories.
So, who benefited from these patents? Not consumers, who were forced to pay over the odds for TVs for years. Not, ultimately, the manufacturers who'd failed to improve the productivity of their manufacturing plants because they were not subject to price competition. Not European innovation, since manufacturers did not have to continue to innovate, simply rest on their laurels.
Interestingly, the PAL patents are often used as an example of the SUCCESS of the patent system...
But: Motörhead
You're not metal enough!
Don't fool yourself. The proponents of software patents will soon have another foot in the door with the TRIPS agreement, which has influenced the EPC2000, which will come into effect in December (or possibly earlier).
As another factor that brings them joy is that a status quo is being created. "Companies have spent so much money on these sw patents. Being granted by the EPO, these companies had an expectation that they would be held up in court."
This terrible situation is caused mainly by one (Dutch)man with the EPO, under whose direction the definitions stretched time after time, until we're in the situation we're now.
Bert
Please be aware that IBM has recently started attacking companies, via bogus software patents. This includes companies who are using Linux in their products. One example is Platform Solutions Inc., who is IBM's only competitor in the very profitable mainframe space.
What is especially disconcerting is that IBM (who strongly supported the previous Software Patent inititive in Europe) is now proposing a so-called "softer" approach (referred to in FTA).
In short, IBM is basically trying to cozy up and pretend they are the good guys. But as soon as they get an advantage or control over a market place, they pull out all of the stops to dominate everything.
Fortunately Microsoft hasn't picked up on this approach yet, as it appears to be successful. IBM now appears to be driving the only approach being seriously considered to implement Software Patents in Europe. And people appear to be listening, because of the things like you stated above.
This is commonly referred to as a Trojan Horse approach, and many people, including the EU, appear to be buying it. As such, IBM is in the drivers seat on this one.
We are far better off without Software Patents. We don't need to worry about how IBM is going to exploit them to its advantage once it gets the laws it wants passed.
Yes, I am extremely grateful that Microsoft hasn't picked up on this thought or approach yet.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Creative lawyers (you know, that deceptive dream team), first tobacco, then anti environment during election time, and who knows what else.
Have *they* ever giving this EU patent thing a whirl?
The beneficiary of any patent is always the patent holder, in the most direct way. In an indirect way, the public does benefit, because they get some better product (PAL, the typewriter, the light bulb, etc.) out of it at minimal expense.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
that you're 90% full of shit. Unless, of course, you can actually come up with some citations/references for that figure.