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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."'"
I say we patent this type of solution and then release it under a [insert name of least controversial open source license here] license so it can spread like Gonorrhea throughout other governments.
It's still only a draft.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Software patents have never been allowed in Europe, and the UK like to make a big stand against such patents.
http://eupat.ffii.org/log/intro/
It's really only the Americas that have software patents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent
Are you sure? I thought we had the stupid situation where companies were being granted patents in the UK in spite of the fact that Europe had banned them. IIRC one politician (who had obvious corporate connections) said it was only "right" and "fair" that they should be allowed more protection!
Maybe I'm just interpreting it wrong, but that is how I read it.
That's how it is. The push to codify software patents has failed, however there hasn't been a successful counter-push to have software declared unpatentable. Right now it's a grey zone where software is patentable but the patents are theoretically unenforcable as they have no legal ground to stand on.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Because an algorithm/piece of software is essentially just a mathematical formula. And formulae are not patentable.
Well, first you need a visa. Which probably requires a job or student-status. You haven't applied for that. I expect you'll also need a passport, which you still haven't applied for even though I've been reminding you for months. I mean, jeeze, you can get a passport photo at freakin' WALMART. So really it's just that you can't be bothered to start making progress on it.
Oh, and your mom called.
Patents were not intended to provide protection to investors. The patent system was initially devised to spread scientific knowledge, allowing interested parties access to the technical information behind new innovations. Such a shame that they're main use now is to stifle the very thing they were intended to promote..!
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.
Software (meaning the code) is copyrightable and should not be patentable.
Let me give you an oversimplified example:
* Take 100 programmers from this website (rookies, dinosaurs and everything in between)
* Assign them all the exact same task: write software to solve a specific business problem
* Require them all to work in isolation so there can be no sharing of ideas or solutions
* On your marks, get ready, go!
Chances are that most (if not all) will come up with a solution that addresses the specific problem that needed to be solved (as well as assorted other features and functionality because, hey, we are programmers). There is also a very good chance that more than one will come up with the same solution, or similar enough that it would "qualify" as a patent violation. So, who gets the patent?
* Is it the first person to finish, even if their solution is clumsy or inelegant or inefficient?
* Is it the best solution? Who judges this?
* What about the people who came up with the same (or similar) solutions independently?
* Should whomever gets the patent be able to sue the other 99 people for patent infringement just because they arrived at a similar or different business solution independently?
That's one of the basic problems with software patents. And that alone is enough to make me think software patents are just a bad idea.
I've never really followed the arguments behind why everyone hates software patents. I'm not trolling here, please help me understand. As I understand it, the idea behind a patent is to encourage an inventor to invest resources in R&D and then to share their new techniology with society, in return for a time-limited monopoly on exploiting that new technology. This is arguably a bit broken at the moment -- largely because patents seem to be overly broad and to last too long -- but the basic idea seems sound.
See http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/03/19/software-patents/
The software patent system may be in need of repair, but is it really worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
It's too broken, too fundamentally broken, to fix.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
That's right, rather like domain squatting, people have been randomly patenting stuff in the hope that they might have something valuable once software patents are allowed in the UK.
Fortunately (from my point of view, anyway, as an independent developer) software patents in Europe have been knocked on the head and these things will remain worthless for a few more years at least.
This is a DRAFT of a bill. It's not even a bill yet. And while some are speculating that this is intended to get more public attention, I think it may be intended to get more private (funds) attention. With all the high pressure lobbying [read "involves a lot of money"] I imagine NZ's government may be feeling they aren't getting their share of attention from those in support of software patentability. The inclusion of this may only be there to rattle some cages.
I imagine you could still patent the concept as long as it was implemented as firmware but I assume the patent could not be used to stop others implementing the concept in software. Standard disclaimers - IANAL. I haven't RTFA.
You also apparently either don't understand what firmware is, or what software is. (Your software doesn't cease to be software if it's burned into non-reprogrammable memory. Not all software is firmware, but all firmware is software. It's just software recorded on non-erasable chip media. Heck, often these days it's erasable too. Not as easily as when it's saved on disk, but still... software doesn't cease being software merely because you change the media you save it on.)
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Even the simple GIF format, which wasn't particularly clever at all, got a patent.
No. Terry Welch's improvement on Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv's LZ78 algorithm was patented, making the LZW algorithm used for compressing the data in a GIF file a patented process. The GIF file format was never patented (I don't think that's even possible, but IANAL).
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Patenting an algorithm is not really like patenting an invention. It's more like patenting a mathematical law or a scientific discovery. If someone comes up with a new way to factor large numbers, they should get a Nobel Prize, not a market monopoly and a private island (unless you can buy a private island for cost of your Nobel Prize award).
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Draft bill. Not final. Not to worry. An army of lobbyists is already on a flight to NZ to "correct" the situation before it passes.
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If I invent a new physical device -- an array of levers and cogs to build something, or a new chemical process to manufacture something -- I can patent it.
I start a new hardware store in a growing town. It's a physical construction that nobody has done in that town before. Why can't I patent that idea and stop other people starting a competing hardware store when they see it's a success? Think carefully about your answer.
Personally, I am thoroughly sick of people who automatically assume that patents, a massive government interference in citizens minding their own business, will encourage innovation in every area of human endeavour when it's quite clear they don't. If they're going to argue for this government interference then they should at least have some scientific evidence that it is a net positive in any particular area. Not the usual childish handwaving about how an inventor won't invent without patents (history shows this is nonsense) and that patents have no harmful effect on society and the free exchange of ideas (also nonsense).
Conversely, there do seem to be advatages to keeping software patents.
A patent stops billions of people from using an idea that's probably going to be independently re-invented many times so that one (1) person can have additional incentive to invent something. Explain to me why this is a net positive? Particularly for software industry where the entry cost is so low? Keep in mind I'm well aware of patent proponents usual handwaving excuses.
Your example is just sad. The vast majority of inventors will never get that break and in addition they'll be held back by the patent portfolios of large companies. Patents are just a tool, large companies have more of them and patents in no way change the balance of power between corporations and individuals.
The software patent system may be in need of repair, but is it really worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
There is no baby. Your automatic assumption there must be without evidence is telling.
In addition to the above the patent system is based on very shaky intellectual foundations. They can't even objectively decide whether two shades of the color orange are the same or different, let alone whether two ideas are the same or different, a far more complex question and at the heart of deciding whether something is new.
---
Every new patent is a new law; another opportunity for a lawyer to make money at the expense of the wider community.
--Donald Knuth
What I'm still not getting, is what could possibly make you think you know better than Donald Knuth...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
It is bad news. You've just been brainwashed by the thousands of stories in the media about how patents are bad that bad news looks good to you.
Patents allow inventors to earn a living. How is making money by creating valuable things bad?
Hey, not the Americas, just the US.
Brazil and most of South America have no concept of software patents.
In Brazil specifically, the law says that mechanism to protect software is the same as literary works, i.e. copyright. Business methods are also not patentable in Brazil.
Mexican law also states that software (computer programs) are not inventions and thus, not subject to patents.
In 2009 Canada also rejected software and business methods patents. As far as I know, this has not changed. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
-- SouNerd.com
>Your garden variety software inventions has little to do with math.
No, all software *is* math. Completely.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
As someone deeply involved in the Patents Act process in NZ (I wrote my thesis on it ;-) http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/handle/10063/1027?show=full
And presented to Parliament on the Act; I can tell you that the Select Committee report is the final stages before the Bill is either passed in Parlimentary Session or thrown out for another full round (considering the current Draft on the Table started in 2002 I doubt that will happen).
AEnertia
Witty, tag line goes here
I don't think they've completely outlawed software patents. The way I read it is that anything tied to a business model is not allowed (hence Amazon's silly 1-click being tossed.) It appears you can still patent a computer-implemented process, but not the program itself.
From what I've read, Canada generally will not allow a patent on software unless it's been tied to hardware in some way. Almost all software patents currently in the US would be ruled as business methods here and thrown out as a result.
Sources: Source 1 and Source 2.
Happy to discuss your example.
Google (in this context) is a search engine - If you want people to use your search engine, you don't need to tell them HOW it finds results.
The PageRank algorithm is an implementation. Search algorithms existed long before PageRank, and new ones are dreamt up all the time.
Now, Stanford University didn't patent PageRank to release it to the public. It's not like PageRank was some sekrit sauce that would be lost forever if the algorithm had not been described. On the contrary, if it hadn't been patented it could have been freely reverse engineered. In this case, patents have postponed wider use of this useful algorithm, and so harmed progress.
Let's say tomorrow someone comes up with an algorithm for strong AI.
A more interesting proposition to be sure, but a fantastical one. If you push me on it though I would say say patents are likely to stave off the singularity rather then hasten its arrival.