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NZ Draft Bill Rules Out Software Patents
Korgan writes "In what must be a first in the face of ACTA and US trade negotiations pressure, a Parliamentary select committee has released a draft bill that explicitly declares that software will no longer be patentable in New Zealand. FTA: 'Open source software champions have been influential in excluding software from the scope of patents in the new Patents Bill. Clause 15 of the draft Bill, as reported back from the Commerce Select Committee, lists a number of classes of invention which should not be patentable and includes the sub-clause "a computer program is not a patentable invention."'"
In the US, software isn't patentable directly, either. If you claim "a program which causes a processor to perform the steps of...", then you get yourself a rejection under 35 USC 101, because a program isn't a process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter.
One way that lawyers get around this is by claiming "a computer-readable storage medium storing a program which, when executed, causes a processor to perform the steps of...." A computer-readable storage medium (e.g., a hard drive) is generally considered to be an article of manufacture. This almost got tested in court several years ago, in In re Beauregard, but the USPTO decided to withdraw its rejection and issue the patent before the court got a chance to weigh in on it, and nobody has brought up the topic in litigation since then.
Because, some poor sucker programmer, living in his mom's basement, could come up with the same idea tomorrow, and find a way to make it work so much better.But the poor sod, who has no idea that the base for his work has a patent on it, will have his ass kicked for his hard work.
Patents STOP progress, and are rewarding the WRONG people.. They should be kept out of the incredibly fast paced world of computer software.
If you can't capitalize on your idea fast enough, tough freaking biscuits..
Copyright on the other hand is a useful protective tool. It stops people stealing your work byte for byte, note for note, word for word... But even that has been abused by insane time limits.
I am a programmer, and what I'd give to have free reign over my creative process... what I could accomplish without having to worry about the bullshit associated with software patents in the Divided States of Assholica. Seriously, please someone nuke those jerks, starting with their patent offices..
Because it's far too easy to accidentally create a program that infringes on a patent, most software are made up of basic building blocks that together make a unique product, so if anything should be patentable it should be the building blocks, and only the ones that are not trivial, but who gets to decide this? Which means that we end up in court, which costs a lot of money and opens up for trolls.
Copyright (a short, say 2-5 years depending on product) and trademark should be enough to discourage competition, if competition can make a program just like yours without copying you and still sell it at a lower cost then you are doing something wrong or your product just wasn't unique enough.