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New Zealand U-Turns, Will Grant Software Patents
ciaran_o_riordan writes "Due to lobbying by a group called NZICT, New Zealand's parliament is now set to let go of its proposal to ban software patents. Patent attorney Steven Lundberg announced the details in a blog entry. This was quickly deleted, but not before it got stored in Google's cache. Here we can read that 'Hon Simon Power has asked MED [Ministry of Economic Development] to work with the Parliamentary Counsel's Office to redraft the section along the lines of the European Patent Convention.' Which is exactly the opposite of March's announcement that 'computer software should be excluded from patent protection as software patents can stifle innovation and competition, and can be granted for trivial or existing techniques.' The background to this case gives every reason to be hopeful, if computer users in New Zealand get active again."
I don't want to sound overly sceptical, but the evidence for this is a blog post that the blog's author has since deleted, right? Would it kill someone to email the blog's author and ask why it was deleted? Could it be that it's inaccurate in some material way? I'm not arguing that the post's deletion is a demonstration of inaccuracy, but it raises an eyebrow.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
One of the key issues with NZICT is that they claim to represent the New Zealand IT community, and yet in reality their membership is governed by commercial size - and of course, all the large outfits with precious few exceptions are the local chapters of the multinational giants (Microsoft, HP, et al).
So what this situation illustrates is
a) The Select Committee process is a joke (as it appears if you have sufficient clout, you can ignore it and go straight to the minister)
and
b) NZICT are shooting a good portion of New Zealand's home grown ICT industry in the foot, and pretending that it's for the good of the industry at large.
By and large the Patent world provides leverage for large firms with large patent portfolios and the budget to play in the legal marketplace. It hurts smaller firms who don't have the capital for prolonged legal battles. The arguments 'for' Patents are not entirely without merit (imho) but the arguments 'against' outweigh them by a mile - unless there's profit to be lost.
-.-. --.-
The reason software patents are described as funny kinds of machines is to get around the disgust with which most people feel when maths and logic are turned into private possessions by force of lobbying.
However, no matter how bizarre the patent language, and no matter whether or not the patent is granted or not, the final decision lies with a judge who determines whether or not the patent applies to a product being imported or sold. At this stage it is extremely simple to distinguish what is "software" from what is not. If you can download it and run it, it's software. So take for example a media player accused of infringing MP3 patents. If I can download and run a new codec, that is software.
Now, who decides whether or not software is patentable? Clearly this clique of US firms trying to control the NZ market are cheating by referring to "Europe", since the same clique hacked the EPC over so many years, fighting EU civil society for years as it then tried to make that hack into EU-wide law.
What they are now doing in Europe is to try to create a separate non-EU patent court that will decide on what is patentable, and what is not. Where judges are chosen by the patent industry. Which works for its clients, i.e. patent holders. I.e. Big pharma, big software, and big telco will be, indirectly but still in a controlled fashion, choosing the judges, and deciding on the outcome of patent arguments.
It seems relatively cheap to buy lawmakers.
The real issue here is simply democracy, and who makes the laws, and how.
My blog
Software patents hinder progress because they give existing slow-moving, dinossaur-like large companies the tools to kill small innovative IT companies before they outcompete them and turn into the large companies of the future.
In Software there are no basic concepts which are trully new or innovative and require patent protection - pretty much any software concept can and will be independently reinvented again and again because all professionals in the field will come up with similar solutions when trying to solve similar problems.
All software which is sufficiently complex for being non-obvious is already protected by copyright due to it's sheer size - no patents needed.
Any country that adopts Software Patents creates the conditions for the stagnation of their own Software industry - Software Patents are used by large companies to kill, while they're still young, any and all companies which might've one day turn out into something like Google.
For a country like New Zeeland, which has no large software companies, enacting Software Patents will just kill local software companies for the benefit of larger foreign ones. This is pretty much the pinacle of stupidity.
As an European I tell you New-Zeelanders: don't follow-up on the footsteps of the EU and the US - in 20 years time all new and innovative ideas will be coming up in countries where, thanks to weaker IP enforcement, the cauldron of innovation and unfettered competition continues to bubble at full strength, while places like the US and the EU will see their economies continuing stagnate and decay because the few new ideas they still manage to produce are being killed in the cradle.
New Zealand Brings Software Patents back From Brink of Extinction
New Zealand looks like its reversing course on software patent protection. On June 9, there was a meeting between representatives of NZ Ministry of Economic Development (MED) and representatives of NZICT Group. It appears that New Zealand is likely to ultimately adopt an approach to software patents that is consistent with the EPO’s position. My thanks to Jim Hallenbeck (Schwegman) and Paik Saber (IBM) for relaying this information.
Here is the summary of the meeting provided by Brett O’Riley CEO of NZICT:
Our representative delegation met with MED in Wellington yesterday. This was to discuss the formal submission we had made to Hon Simon Power last week covering our concerns about the proposed draft legislation.
The end result of the meeting was extremely encouraging. While section 15 (3A) will not be removed (our ideal outcome), Hon Simon Power has asked MED to work with the Parliamentary Counsel’s Office to redraft the section along the lines of the European Patent Convention. He has informed the Commerce Select Committee that Crown Law will be undertaking some redrafting before the bill gets to its Second Reading.
While it’s obviously not the end of the journey, it was very pleasing to have a positive indication that the Government recognises there is a need to amend section 15(3A) to make sure it’s consistent with the intent of adopting European practice. While European law does restrict software patents this is positive progress, and the view of our team is that this would be a good outcome for the New Zealand ICT industry.
In summary, the MED confirmed earlier statements from Select Committee members and MED officials that the intent was to follow European law (even though this is not mentioned in the Commentary to the Patents Bill). The MED acknowledged that amendment is required to achieve this, and that the Minister supports finding a reasonable way forward on this point before proceeding with the Bill.
The meeting was attended by myself, as well as Peter Wren-Hilton from Pingar, Dougal Watt and Julie Motley from IBM, and Waldo Kuipers from Microsoft. There was an apology from Ed Robinson (Aptimize) though I verbally covered his concerns. From the MED, Rory McLeod (Director – Competition, Trade and Investment Branch) attended, as did Silke Radde and Warren Hassett who are responsible for overall IP policy and the Patents Bill respectively.
Rory McLeod began with an update on the Patents Bill clause 15(3A).
He described the decision of the Select Committee as being to move to a “normal patentable situation as in Europe”, that did not allow patenting of software per se.
Rory then went into some detail (partly in response to questions we had raised) about what the Select Committee intent was:
The intent had never been to ban software patents outright (and the MED would have serious concerns about that if it were proposed).
If it is patentable in the EU then it should be patentable in New Zealand.
Software should be treated like other technology, so should have a technical purpose and be an inventive step to be patentable, as in Europe.
Not just any software would be patentable, it would need to meet the above test.
Embedded or not embedded is or was not the distinction that is intended.
The signal that the Government wants to send is to follow European law and practice.
The MED also now clearly acknowledge that clause 15(3A) is not adequate to convey this intent. It was great being able to present practical examples of world leading software being developed by Pingar and Aptimize, and hear MED recognise the importance of these companies being able to seek patent protection.
The MED said they wou
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
They're on holiday. Yes, I know what you're thinking - surely they can't both be away?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."