Software Now Un-Patentable In New Zealand

A few weeks ago New Zealand Software decided to grant software patents. But now "Despite what appears to be a big-budget lobbying effort by the pro-patent fraternity, Hon Simon Power announced today that he wouldn't be modifying the proposed Patents Bill hence software will be un-patentable once the Bill passes into law. This is significant. As we've previously pointed out software patents aren't black and white, and there are certainly pros and cons. However on balance, we believe they represent a far greater risk to smaller NZ-based software providers than opportunity, and there are many cases where they have significantly stifled innovation. We believe it's near impossible for software to be developed without breaching some of the hundreds of thousands of software patents awarded around the world, hence many software companies in New Zealand, creating outstanding and innovative software, live a constant risk that their entire business will be wound up overnight due to litigious action by a patent holder. This has led to many a 'patent troll' company, primarily in the US. These are non-software companies who exist only to buy up old patents with the sole intention of suing innovative software companies for apparent breach of these patents. The effects of this have been chilling."

Comments

Re:Now watch the New Zealand Software Industry boo

[Hurricane78]

one of those mad schemes of the first decade of the 21st Century, alongside subprime mortgages, leveraged investment vehicles and so on.

I have a few more:

• representatives leading something
  • 
       
  • democracy trough a administration (made from humans)

  •    

  • communism trough a interim government (made from humans)
• government protection for diseases, instead of healing them
  • 
       
  • “religion”
    • 
             
    • making a taboo out of everything relating sex and nudity

    •        

    • psycho mob organizations abusing people trough social engineering (churches)

    •    

  •    

  • sacrificing one’s like for the interests of others
• calling nearly pure preparations (like sugar) “food”
• calling processed-to-death (or worse: processed to a state where the body thinks it’s usable, but it’s really defective, like heated milk) stuff “food”
• the concept of “interest [finan.]”
• the idea that you could own something imaginary (like an idea).

Re:Now watch the New Zealand Software Industry boo

[AK Marc]

Historians will look back and see patent trolling as one of those mad schemes of the first decade of the 21st Century, alongside subprime mortgages, leveraged investment vehicles and so on.

Subprime loans have been given out for as long as loans have been given out. There is nothing wrong with a subprime mortgage. The problem wasn't even that the default rate on the subprime mortgages was too high for the type of loan they were. The issue was that the lenders lied about the risk when selling them so that they were rated as non-subprime loans when they were bundled into leveraged investment vehicles. And the joy of a leveraged investment vehicle is that when your "guaranteed" investment drops, that drop is multiplied by as many times as it was leveraged. So between the fraud in lying about the risk category of the loans when bundling them into investments and the treatment of investments with collateral as "guaranteed" (proven a false assertion back in the 1980s with the S&L scandal, and many times before that), it was the banks directly that caused this.

And the worst part is, they got to name it. And they named it "subprime" so as to shift the blame to high-risk borrowers who were expected to default, and did. The problem was never the borrowers, or even their individual loans. The problem was the lies to sell fraudulent investments and then the multiple leveraging of that investment to compound the fraud. But no, it's been blamed on Blacks and minority lending practices for the entire bubble and bust, and all starting with naming it for those who did nothing wrong.