Letter To Abolish Software Patents In Australia

Ben Sturmfels writes "Over 500 members of the Australian software industry have have signed an open letter urging their government to abolish software patents. Signatories include free software luminaries Andrew Tridgell and Jonathan Oxer. In 2008 the Australian government began a Review of Patentable Subject Matter. While we missed the 2009 public consultation period, we hope to influence the government's response to the Review, due in February 2011. The letter will be presented to Minister Kim Carr in early August."

Comments

Patently Obvious...

[muphin]

I actually own several IP's of several software technologies. The only reason I registered these was to secure my work (from someone stealing it then suing me, the creator), I am actually FOR the removal of software patents, this removal will stop the fear of being sued over something so trivial and encourage creativity and innovation, something the world is so desperate in need of.

I am so ashamed of countries that extend the copyrights far beyond whats reasonable just to ensure they can keep making money off it.
I Just signed the letter and will pass it on, I hope you do the same.

Re:I don't understand this..

[king neckbeard]

The US became the dominant world force in copyright when it had significantly weaker copyright laws than basically all of Europe. We still lack things like 'moral rights' and have some of the most expansive fair use rights in the world (at least before the DMCA, anyway). As for software, there are several issues. The first is that the functional element and the written element are virtually the same. Variable names, outputs strings, and source code comments are about the only non-functional elements. If you had a specific patent claim held to the same degree of scrutiny as say a pharmaceutical, it would have hundreds of claims for even an elementary program or portion thereof. However, most patents are very broad, and thus prevent alternatives that function in a largely different way, but are similar enough to fall into the patent. Another issue is that compatibility is incredibly important in software, and patents get in the way of compatibility. You can have software that is technically superior to your competitor, but if your competitor's product is already in widespread usage and your product isn't compatible, you will probably lose. A final issue is that the field of software has a lot of problems with competition, and software patents give an even bigger advantage to billion dollar companies over startups. Also, you seem to not understand the nature of copyright and patent laws in the US. The constitution clause that allows for patents states that

The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Not only do patents and copyright exist for the benefit of the public, they are simply a means to the end, not an ends to themselves. If we can conclude that some other incentive already in place does the job well enough, we could just end our patent and copyright systems. International treaties make it a bit more complicated than that, but it's not as if the US has a problem with acting unilaterally. As for why Australia would want to do that, they generally don't really have large, established firms, so Australian software companies (and users) are going to be on the losing end of the system with software patents in place.

Simply put Politics, and Software

[realxmp]

Firstly you need to understand that there is a limit to how far the rest of the world will protect US Copyrights and Patents and that limit is "until there's nothing in it for them". At the moment the US's only big incentive is access to their markets and free trade agreements, this doesn't always work. You can already see the effects of this in Africa where the Pharma industry has had to make big concessions to stop African governments simply ignoring their patents, you can't trade if you're dead. A more interesting example is Asia where you have rampant piracy. The reason why the US has to turn a blind eye here is simply that they NEED Asia for cheap goods for their own economy. You need to be reasonable about IP or it really will become imaginary, this game only works as long as everyone follows the rules. If it gets too biased in your favour, then they simply won't play.

Secondly you need to look at why software patents are different. There are two big problems that software patents create here because of how different they are to normally patentable innovations. One of the big problems is because of the sheer speed of progress and time to market compared to pharma and physical inventions. Pharma innovations normally have a considerable time to market because of the testing they need to undergo, as a reward they get a monopoly for a few short years, whilst competitors are encouraged to find the alternatives which usually exist. Physical inventions likewise have the advantage of a large number of alternative ways of doing things. The problem with software and algorithms in particular is that quite often there isn't an alternative that allows you to perform the same task and maintain compatibility etc. And this is leaving aside the problem of ill-trained examiners, patently obvious subject matter and the problems of patent pools.