Slashdot Mirror
EU Patent Examiners Warn Parliament Will Have "No Power"
zoobab writes "The Staff Union of the European Patent Organisation sent a letter to the President of the European Parliament, warning that after the EU accedes to the European Patent Convention, there is a risk that the European Parliament would be 'circumvented' as a legislator. The European Patent Organisation is in no way a model of democracy: national patent offices are in power, there is no parliament involved in the decision-making process, and diplomatic conferences are held behind closed doors. There are plans to create a central patent court in Europe, which would operate in a democratic vacuum, not counterbalanced by any legislative assembly, in particular not the European Parliament. Such a central patent court could also validate software patents via caselaw (as the German Supreme Court recently did with the Microsoft FAT patent). And Microsoft, IBM, and SAP are lobbying in Brussels not to reopen consideration of the software patent directive."
The United Patent Litigation System replaces the EPLA. The official justifications are that it will decrease bureaucracy and costs. As a side effect (which is the real motivation of some pushers), it will push aside the European Parliament (which threw out swpats in 2005), and give more power to the European Patent Office (which approves almost as much as the USPTO does). More details:
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The pursuit of software patents is teh pursuit of fraud and public deception.
abstraction physics application (including software)is a human right and duty.
Beware of software patent pursuers bearing gifts.
the equivalent would have been in medieval times the monks to block the printing press after they realized that not only bibles can be printed!
Oh my God I hate these lobbyists and IP-lords!
It's probably easy to figure out where I personally stand, given that I founded and ran the European NoSoftwarePatents campaign and that I also opposed the original proposal named EPLA (European Patent Litigation Agreement). Nevertheless I tried my best to give both sides of the argument fair and accurate representation of their statements and views on my blog.
There are indeed reasons to be concerned about a drift toward software patents in Europe, not only at the legislative level but also in terms of judicial decisions. In the past, the highest German court in such matters applied tough tests such as the controllable-forces-of-nature criterion to distinguish software patent applications from technical inventions. However, a few weeks ago it upheld one of Microsoft's FAT patents, as this slashdot article also mentions. As I explained on my blog, this could be but need not be a "FATal patent ruling". The detailed decision must be analyzed once available in order to understand whether the ruling related to the question of patentable subject matter. It's possible that it was only about inventiveness/prior art, given that the relevant court is an appeals court to which typically only certain (but very rarely all) aspects of a case are referred. In that case, the appeals court would not have been allowed to comment on non-referred issues (no matter how striking those might have been). Patent attorneys in Europe often try not to raise the question of patentable subject matter in their appeals because they would bite the hand that feeds them if they achieved rulings restricting the scope of patentable subject matter. They generally prefer to make invalidation cases on such grounds as "not inventive [as compared to prior art]", "not new [due to prior art]", "not sufficiently disclosed".
Another example of software patents that are already (unfortunately) quite enforceable in Europe are multimedia codec patents, such as MP3 and MP4 patents. It's become an annual ritual at CeBIT that dozens of confiscations of "pirated product", of which MP3 players are probably the largest group, take place on the first day of the show. I mentioned this in a recent blog post on multimedia patents.
While I appreaciate the links and information. I even more appreaciate the fact that someone finally said what as needed (and was heard).
As a patentholder (no, hardware, not software), I can vouch for the fact that a centralized european patent office is sorely needed. Currently, getting a patent in all of europe depends on first finding a patent office that WILL grant you the patent (which can be hard because most of 'em sit on their arse saying; "Ee dont under stand this technology, it's new to us". Yeah morons, ofcourse it's new, otherwise I wouldn't be patenting it, now would I ?), and then running around to every OTHER patent office in europe and saying "But THEY already gave me the patent rights".
And this is not only difficult, but also expensive and an entry barrier for new technology movers and inventors.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
For those who are interested in what kinds of initiatives the EU is planning to take in connection with intellectual property rights beyond that new patent and patent court system, here's a summary of a speech by the Commission official driving the "patent reform" effort. Keywords: data retention, ACTA, Digital Agenda, aftermath of Microsoft case, Google Street View, open standards, open content, criminal prosecution of IPR infringers, trademarks, AdWords.
I have spent a fair amount of time in Brussels in recent years, starting with my campaign against software patents in Europe. While I understand what you mean to say with your criticism, I would disagree that the EU is inherently undemocratic, let alone antidemocratic.
The EU is a complex construct: it's neither a federation such as the United States or Germany nor an international organization such as the World Trade Organization. It's an in-between, it's a supranational alliance of countries, and that entails a setup in which the national governments of the EU Member States still wield a lot of power. Otherwise we would have (for better or worse, which is not the question) a system more similar to that of the United States, in which the sovereignty of each state is very limited compared to that of an EU Member State.
The original idea of a united Europe was a peace project. It was not about liberalizing markets, although even that is not necessarily against the interests of citizens. As someone who travels a lot in Europe, I can see some of the benefits that the EU has brought to citizens, such as the cap on mobile phone roaming charges that the EU imposed a few years ago.
The complexity of the EU's structures has the effect that only a limited number of people even understand how decisions are taken. There's probably just a minority of US citizens who know exactly all of the procedural possibilities concerning conciliation between the Senate and the House (such as the "deemed passed" principle that the Democrats were considering at some point to push the healthcare bill through), but at least people in the US will know their senators and probably also their congressmen (for their constituencies). Here in Europe, people generally don't know their MEPs (Members of the European Parliament). The media don't report because Brussels seems so remote, processes are complicated and time-consuming, and even when a legislative decision is taken, it usually takes time before it gets implemented by the Member States (enshrined in national laws) -- two years is the standard period that EU directives allow for that purpose. Most of the problems that people criticize when talking about the EU's "democratic deficit" could be solved by the Fourth Estate (the media), but there's a chicken-and-egg problem because citizens don't know about "Brussels" for lack of media coverage and the media don't report much for lack of interest by their audiences.
I also think one has to acknowledge in all fairness that the European Parliament's powers have been significantly enhanced by the Lisbon Treaty. I can understand if people say it was not enough, but there has certainly been progress, with now pretty much all decisions requiring the support of the Parliament (either through co-decision or assent procedures).
Or to put it politely;
Originality is the art of concealing one's sources.
"The distinction between creation and discovery is not clear cut or rigorous.Nor is it clear why such a distinction, even if clear, is ethically relevant in defining property rights. No one creates matter; they just manipulate and grapple with it according to physical laws. In this sense, no one really creates anything. They merely re arrange matter into new arrangements and patterns. An engineer who invents a new mousetrap has rearranged existing parts to provide a function not previously performed. Others who learn of this new arrangement can now also make an improved mousetrap. Yet the mousetrap merely follows laws of nature. The inventor did not invent the matter out of which the mousetrap is made, nor the facts and laws exploited to make it work.
Similarly, Einstein's "discovery" of the relation E=mc2, once known by others, allows them to manipulate matter in a more efficient way. Without Einstein's, or the inventor's, efforts, others would have been ignorant of certain causal laws, of ways matter can be manipulated and utilized. Both the inventor and the theoretical scientist engage in creative mental effort to produce useful, new ideas. Yet one is rewarded, and the other is not".(Kinsella, Stephan. "Against Intellectual Property").
"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property".
--Thomas Jefferson, to Isaac McPherson 13 Aug. 1813 Writings 13:333--35
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Its really simple, nobody wants to deal with the matter for the honesty of the matter.
Neither Proprietary patent supporting parties nor open source patent free parties.
Why is also simple. The honesty of the matter of software would result in not only no software patents but also in genuinely free software, free in the since of making it possible for anyone to create software.
Current software development methodologies are like the roman numeral system in mathematics, where it takes specialization and trade secrets to do any complex math. But then came along the Hindu-Arabic decimal system that enabled the population to do math even beyond the experts. And the experts probably argued that only a fool would think nothing can have value (the zero place holder), as today the coding experts claim the user is not interested in creating programs. Where the fact is that users just don't want it to be a full time job requiring years of schooling and/or heavy personal pursuit. They just want to create or modify occasionally, no different than occasionally using math or a calculator to determine a result.
But the current software development methodologies do not support "occasionally". And the unnecessary level of overcomplexifabulocation in software development is the "only a fool would want to do it occasionally" false defense.
Help Prove Software is not Patentable and end this matter once and for all, and it is provable, otherwise you are playing othello, reversi.
And anyone who has been following this software patent battle damn well knows this othello, reversi game well, even if only as a spectator.
1. Design crippled file system (8.3 filenames)
2. "Invent" "ingenious" fix that fixes the aforementioned flaw somewhat (long filenames)
3. Patent & license. Win.
No "???" here. Only "WTF" and where is our society heading?
No, the main goal have always been further integration and democracy within the Union, however, certain groups who often complain that the EU is undemocratic refuse to let it become more democratic, i.e. Eurosceptics such as the British Conservative party or the UKIP, because apparently a democratic Union would undermine national sovereignty.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Long expired
anything that Eu does now have to be approved by the Eu parliament. If parl doesnt approve it, it cant happen.
Read radical news here
What you don't say here is that rulings by the court that ruled on the FAT patent (the Bundesgerichtshof, which is the highest German court in all matters of civil and criminal law, above which there's only a Federal Constitutional Court, which wouldn't heart a patent case) are definitely binding, especially if a part of the ruling is defined as a "Leitsatz" ("guiding ruling"). All lower courts -- which means all courts in the country except for the aforementioned constitutional court -- have to follow those decisions. That's something you didn't mention, and it's important in this case.
I don't get why MP3 patents are enforceable. If it was special hardware they are running on, I would understand it, but - for example -the Sandisk Sansa players, which were confiscated at Cebit some years ago and one of which I incidentally own, are generic hardware, simple MP3 decoding on the ARM CPUs of the player, no DSP or custom chip support. If that is enforceable, everything is. Or where is the difference to other software?
You realize that “further integration” is the opposite of “democracy” because it is the removal of choices, do you?
Logically it leads towards only one government, and you being unable to flee to anywhere else, if you happen to disagree.
But it’s all awwright, because it’s in the name of the oh-so-holy “democracy”, which, when you remove the pink glasses of delusion, is not any better than a communistic “transitional government” (those that somehow never ended).
They both still have a fatal flaw: There are humans leading others, that are expected to be completely unselfish.
Let’s face it: That ain’t gonna happen. Ever. People do care for themselves. People want themselves to succeed in evolution. Or else they would by the definition of evolution, not exist.
As long as the proxy between our wishes, and what becomes the law of the land, is other humans, it won’t ever work. Period.
Democracy only has one difference: It is the stealthiest of them all. And together with modern mass-media brainwashing it is in fact nearly perfectly concealable, since you can make people want to act against their own best interests.
In short: Unless that “government” is replaced by a “very small shell script” open-source client, that forms a distributed p2p trust network with an open API, a “one government” idea is the stuff of apocalyptic horror stories.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Hurga wrote:
Your question is right on. MP3 patents are pure software patents: compression algorithms and some of the patents don't even define a particular compression algorithm but just methods for how to organize compression (such as an iterative approach: compressing with increasing lossiness factors until the result fits into an allotted amount of memory.
In a software-patent-free world, MP3 would not be patentable either. However, substantive patent law is a complex and tricky field and differences can be subtle, resulting in one patent being upheld by a court and a seemingly similar one being thrown out. Sometimes the difference is just in how the patent application is worded. Some attorneys do a better job of presenting their patents as "technical inventions" than others.