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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.'"
"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
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
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?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
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On the outside, you could say that it's only the 'anti' lobby who got its way. But when you look at it a bit more closely, you see that although it was 'led' by the people you could say were the lobby, among other things they worked through involving a not insignificant of 'common citizen' (though those who have an interest in such things.
I firmly believe that's the way democracy should work. Nobody can take an interest in every decisions and policies made by a their own government - hell, even professionnal politicians can't keep track of everything in any meaningful way (that's actually one of the main weapons of lobbies). But if a big enough number of common people were to take an interest in the couple of things they feel are important, if the politician were really accountable - and swiftly - for what they do; if the system wasn't rigged so the professionals can go about their affairs without interference from us peons, I firmly believe we wouldn't be heading for the corporate owned world we seem to be so gleefully headed for.
Color idealistic if you want.