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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.'"
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.
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.
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 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.
It seems to me that you are a victim to the illusion that anything important that happens, happens in the US. Other parts of the world develop stuff as well, you know. Especially Europe.
and as far as i know (which may not be much), h.264 was developped in an international context, by the ITU-T and MPEG, a subgroup of ISO/IEC. The "I" in each acronym stands for international. The ITU-T is actually based in Switzerland. It doesn't sound like the US alone developped it, and that now Europe wants to steal hard-working americans' money to use it.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
You are horribly wrong. For these reasons:
-You are arguing based on a nationalistic view. Yes this way you capture US based minds, but you loose everyone else. "No patents = Bad for USA, Good for Europe" is an argument for the USA to abolish software patents, not for Europe to adopt them.
-You believe that the main reason for technological evolution is patents. No my friend the main reason for evolution is need. There would be no H264 codec if there was no need for it. If there is a need for it, then it will be done. And it is better if it will be done by a consortium (in a standardized way), so as for all to benefit. At the beginning MPEG, JPEG were NOT patented. Why? Because everyone needed it in order to sell more hardware. Same is with H264. They need it so as to have a way to transmit video to small devices with little bandwidth available to them.
An example of your delusion is where you say this:
"
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.
"
From this i guess that you are either too young or too misinformed:
-What about PNG, why develop it so as to be sure that NO patent applies to it?
-What about JPEG, why did the JPEG committee investigated the patent claims in 2002 and were of the opinion that they were invalidated by prior art?. If the committee liked patents as much as you claim they are, why did they try to invalidate them?
Patents are not a silver bullet. There was major technological evolution some thousand years before them too.
What is a silver bullet is a need, and someone to recognize it and find a way to monetarize it. And with patents the second part is getting more and more difficult every day.
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.
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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