Slashdot Mirror
New EU-Wide Patent System Approved
Dupple writes "There's a two page article over on IT World detailing a new patent system passed by the European Parliament that will unify the patent process across most countries in the EU. Quoting: 'Parliament adopted all three proposed regulations needed to form the new patent system on Tuesday: the regulation on a Unitary Patent, the language regime and the formation of a new unified patent court system. Not all European Union member states want a part in the new system: Italy and Spain refused to participate, although they may join at any time. The new system will cut the cost of obtaining a patent in the participating countries by up to 80 percent, the Parliament said. The patents will be made available in English, French and German and applications will have to be made in one of those three languages. Not everyone was pleased with the newly adopted regulation though. MEPs opposing the adopted text are concerned the new system is going to be bad for innovation and business, and by voting for the text, the Parliament is giving away powers, they said. The new regulation "means the European Parliament will abdicate all its political powers to an organization ... that is outside of the E.U.," said Christian Engström, Pirate Party member of parliament, adding that he still wanted a European patent as long as it did not hamper innovation as he believes the proposal in its current form does.'"
Does this mean I can get the EU patent on rounded corners?
joking but seriously I hope that they have some kind of common sense approach over there.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
European Parliament adopts deeply flawed unitary patent, gives up power over innovation policy
Software patents have got to go. And with them, inventions that "can be implemented in software" also need to go. I saw nothing in either link talking about software patents.
Here's an idea: All technology is property of the Government.
If you do something and decide to keep it trade-secret, the Government might decide it looks nice and they'll tear it down to figure out how it works, then publish it. If you submit it to the Government, they'll keep it secret. For like, 20 years. Worst of all, if the Government likes something and can't functionally figure it out, they might just show up and ask.
Patent submission is free. There is no patent court.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
but I have demonstrated prior art on the concept of a socially unified patent system that covers geographic and ideological boundaries guess I need to look for a patent trolling firm to help me rake in the summary judgements
What effect will this have on MPlayer and other software that can playback patent encumbered codecs?
I honestly hope the patent wars continue to escalate until the only people making any money in the tech industry are the lawyers.
I hope things get so bad that when all is said and done, patent-mania makes tulip-mania look like a small price fluctuation.
Wanna bet that's the actual point of this?
Including software “patents” and all that shit.
Hampering innovation is what the patents are doing by design.
: It will be cheaper, easier and faster to transfer money to that new Unitary Patent Organization, that is so happy to take away the fees from other, existing patent organizations. From the outside, if just looks, as if the bureaucrats are fighting for bigger parts of the cake between themselves.
The politicians say that the costs are going to be lower, which means that anyone can hamper innovation 80% cheaper now.
The politicians say that it is going to be easy to patent stuff, which means that anyone can hamper innovation faster.
The politicians say that the patents are going to be approved centrally, which means that the fees from patents are going to channeled to some guy who will be the head of the new patent approval organization.
Conclusion
~ Best man at your service.
A recent TED talk showed me how far patents can go. Patenting obvious things which give convenience is bad. But patenting something which saves lives is... I don't know apropriate word for this. But this is reality. And we must be changing that.
I honestly hope the patent wars continue to escalate until the only people making any money in the tech industry are the lawyers.
I hope things get so bad that when all is said and done, patent-mania makes tulip-mania look like a small price fluctuation.
Do you mean you want to turn the whole tech industry into SCO like IP zombies? are you insane? What we need patent and copyright reform, not a dark age.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Do you mean you want to turn the whole tech industry into SCO like IP zombies? are you insane? What we need patent and copyright reform, not a dark age.
Right now, there are people salivating at the concept of a free for all patent system, because they think a business model based exclusively on patent licensing is both lucrative and sustainable. At the same time there is a complete lack of action from lawmakers because right now the tech industry is thriving. It's not going to be until it costs more to license a patent than it does to make something out of it that people will come to their senses.
I am not surprised at all.
Fortunately UE brings to us lovely chicks to show the true culture of Southern Europe : video
The cost of lawyers will simply be passed on to the consumer. Same thing happened with advertising: marketing has become so prevalent that everybody takes it for granted, but advertising costs a ton of money and companies just work that into the price of their products. Patent wars will simply result in big companies with lots of capital cornering the market, which means fewer choices of lower quality products all around, at higher prices. But the average person won't care because they won't even know/remember that it's possible to get better products at lower prices.
Good - big corps, patent firms whine, whine, whine.
Bad - big corps, patent firms silent.
yeah, baby!!
Nope. The cost of lawyers in the places that keep with this stupidity will be passed to consumers. Meanwhile the countries that ignore it, like China will keep gaining more and more space in the World market.
This is a perfect lesson on how centralization and consolidation of political power (i.e. coercive power) necessarily brings injustice. If you don't agree with the policy -- whatever that policy may be -- it's going to be a lot harder to escape it. If the policy is particularly destructive, it will be multiplied by orders of magnitude compared to a government which is contained.
Since this is slashdot, here's a car analogy. A decentralized political system is like a modern car with all the safety features. You can still get hurt, and even killed, but at least you have the airbags, anti-lock brakes, seatbelts, traction control, and so forth. But then, each step towards centralization of political power is like removing one of those safety features, until at total centralization you are riding in a death trap.
I filed a US patent on establishing a patent system that would span the EU. Can I sue?
Here we go! Having broken _our_ system here in the USA, we always find a way to break other systems worse than our own.
It's so much easier than fixing our own problems.
Dimming innovation at home? Make sure that it's freaking impossible in the lands of our competetors.
Now on to South America and Asia.
USA! USA!
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Devil's advocate: Life expectancy has doubled under the practice you have no name for..
Devilish indeed, especially if you don't mention that it's life expectancy in those part of the world well-fed what you are talking about.
Besides, the real breakthroughs, those bringing the proverbial 80 per cent came before this practice was in place.
Everyone knows that by using polarized light (with polarizers that must cost, say, €/$20 including all-weather ruggedization) and ordinary (cross-) polarized sunglasses, you can almost clearly see in the thickest of fogs.
This, is patented. A dozen times at least, in almost every country.
So, nobody develops it.
You still can build one device for yourself, by hand, if you wish. Nothing more.
Meanwhile, people die, daily, in the fog.
Herve S.