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New Zealand Set To Prohibit Software Patents
Drishmung writes "The New Zealand Commerce Minister Craig Foss today (9 May 2013) announced a significant change to the Patents Bill currently before parliament, replacing the earlier amendment with far clearer law and re-affirming that software really will be unpatentable in New Zealand. An article on the Institute of IT Professionals web site by IT Lawyer Guy Burgess looks at the the bill and what it means, with reference to the law in other parts of the world such as the USA, Europe and Britain (which is slightly different from the EU situation)."
The guys name is FOSS! Sorry it's late. Hehehe.
New Zealand is only going to (try harder to) prohibit vague software patents. The language is still there to patent software.
Let's hope the rest of the world will see sense and follow soon.
Recently a colleague ( also a software engineer ) told me about his trip to New Zealand. He was so impressed by the NZ levelheadedness - which might be, he mused, something close to a national characteristic - that he now considers moving there....
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I don't understand!
How can software - which is an invention - not be patentable, yet genes - which occur naturally - are?
Britain is part of Europe.
Britian != United Kingdom. Patent related legislation applied to the UK, not Britain, at this time.
"Britain" generally refers to the island of Great Britain in the British Isles, or the British Isles in general. The British Isles is a cluster of islands near Europe, not part of it. The United Kingdom is a set of British countries who share the same monarch. The UK is currently part of the European Union.
http://birds-are-nice.me/programming/asfview.shtml
Little something I wrote years ago that reads an ASF file (Or WMA, or WMV) headers and decodes them all into a human-readable dump. Handy thing if you work with media in those formats.
Unless you're in the US. Can't use it there. That format is the subject of a patent. So I'm just going to sit here in the UK and look smug. If I were in the US, I wouldn't have been able to make that. The author of virtualdub is though, so he had to strip ASF-reading functionality out of his software when Microsoft threatened to sue.
If the earth is round, then why don't folks in New Zealand and Austrailia fall off into outer space? Maybe they're so busy keeping a grip down there that they don't have time to file for patents.
'Nuf said.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, to which New Zealand is a signatory, is set to mandate (among many trade "enabling" issues) a strong set of intellectual property rights homologation between involved countries. We are worried (being "we" Mexicans, where software patents are strictly and explicitly off the law) that TPP pushes for software patents.
Does anybody have an insight on what will this mean for this issue in NZ? It is *very* naïve to suppose that, as most TPP-signing countries don't recognize software patents, they will be stopped at the other signatories. Extremely naïve.
Software algorithms, especially as most programmers were taught from the same basics, can be very ubiquitous. While I think coding implementation of an alogrithm can be unique and should be copyrightable, granting patents on the algorithm is a very flawed and growth inhibiting concept. It's nice to see ANY lawmaker realizing this and trying to correct this egregious error that, IMHO, has gimped software development for the last 20 years. I wonder when the laws in the U.S. will catch up with this way of thinking and put an end to all the freaking patent trolls.
-- L8R, guitardood
... because you will need it. The US of fucking A will nuke you faster then NK.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
New Zealand has now joined the Axis of Evil, Steve Ballmer is punching walls while pushing congress to invade and force regime change on this terrorist socialist nation.
Enough said. But I totally expect the US Government and other large multi-national corporations to heavily pressure them into ditching this idea.
How about DNA? How about the thought that somebody could patent my own DNA and there is nothing I can do about it? Revolting.
WooHoo! What I wish patent limitations here would be is 1) must be a tangible inventions (in other words, no software, business models, etc. Must have physical form) 2) Must be something that was invented and not simply discovered. ( no patenting of genes) 3) The person(s) or company that filed the patent must be a practicing entity ( R&D, manufacturing and marketing of that invention must be conducted otherwise the patent will be voided) 4) Patents must be specific to the invention (in simplest terms, meaning that invention 10 + 10 =20 would not be a violation of invention 4 * 5 =20 patent) 5) Patent refers to the specifics of the final product only( the final product of a genetically engineered seed and not just a strand of its DNA. meaning that cross-pollenization and hybridization conducted by nature that creates a new seed that contains that gene does not violate the patent. Up yours Monsanto!!)
I'm usually opposed to software patents because a lot of them seem trivial and focused upon anti-competitive business practices. Of course, patent trolls aren't helping matters either.
On the other hand, I don't see why non-obvious and non-trivial innovations shouldn't be patentable. Many algorithms take a considerable amount of time and money to develop. Industry wouldn't be willing to undertake the development process unless there is an opportunity to recoup their investment.
And human-readable dumps are really nice when you want to know what's going on....
Well, if I can't profit off my inventions in NZ then I'm not going to invent.
Patenting algorithms is patenting mathematics itself. That makes about as much sense as patenting biological processes.
Oh wait. Never mind. Now I see why Monsanto will push the USA to jump all over NZ.
Actually, patenting biological processes, as long as they're actually inventions and not just discoveries, makes a whole lot more sense.
Too bad then that Monsanto hasn't been inventing biological processes, just discovering them.
The gene to degrade the herbicide RoundUp was discovered in bacteria growing in the wastewater from a RoundUp synthesis plant.
But the home of LOR should love patent trolls.
Table-ized A.I.
As all software is run on a mathematical algorithm implemented in a hardware approximation of boolean algebra.
Luckily, the most useful concepts on CS were created 30 to 50 years ago. Imagine a world were hash tables are patented...
Software algorithms, especially as most programmers were taught from the same basics, can be very ubiquitous. While I think coding implementation of an alogrithm can be unique and should be copyrightable, granting patents on the algorithm is a very flawed and growth inhibiting concept.
But that's more of a question of whether a new algorithm is obvious in view of the basics that everyone knows. This is a separate question of whether even the most novel, nonobvious software algorithm ever invented could be patentable - something so far beyond what you can do with the basics, or even beyond imagining: should that super inventive, Nobel-prize winning, unquestioned "Most Non-obvious Program Ever" still be barred from patentability, merely because it's a program?
Obvious programs, of course, shouldn't be patentable, but that's because they're obvious, not because they're programs. Why should you be able to patent a circuit that takes an input, performs a function, and spits out an output, but you shouldn't be able to patent the same exact input-function-output in software? What if your software is explicitly modelling the electronic components, like Circuit Lab? Is it still unpatentable when it's a collection of virtual hardware? In the same vein, what about a new type of automatic transmission for a car - patentable machine, right? What if you model it in a 3D CAD program? Suddenly unpatentable software? Even if, hiding the monitor bezel and cranking the rendering resolution up to full, an observer couldn't tell the difference between the physical prototype and the virtual prototype?
... should that super inventive, Nobel-prize winning, unquestioned "Most Non-obvious Program Ever" still be barred from patentability, merely because it's a program?
Yes. Absolutely. The problem isn't obviousness, it's novelty. Math and software and physical laws are not invented, they're discovered. However non-obvious an algorithm may seem, it's not new; it's always existed, waiting for someone to ask the right question. This is distinct from what patents are meant to cover, which is specific applications of things like math and software and physical laws to the production of particular goods.
Why should you be able to patent a circuit that takes an input, performs a function, and spits out an output, but you shouldn't be able to patent the same exact input-function-output in software?
It's the circuit which is (presumably) novel and patentable, not the function it computes. In other words, the software version lacks exactly the part which would qualify for a patent.
What if your software is explicitly modelling the electronic components, like Circuit Lab? Is it still unpatentable when it's a collection of virtual hardware?
As long as it remains virtual, yes. If you come up with some kind of novel & non-obvious circuit element, the physical circuit element you invented would be patentable. The virtual representation would not be.
In the same vein, what about a new type of automatic transmission for a car - patentable machine, right? What if you model it in a 3D CAD program? Suddenly unpatentable software?
Now you're just being ridiculous. The patentable part is obviously the physical automatic transmission. The patent would not cover a mere 3D model of the transmission.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Yeah yeah, nah.
That's not it bro, that's not us.
We just don't like show-offs eh.
E.g.:
A: Wow, that was awesome, you were great!
B: Yeah I was pretty amazing eh?
A: Don't get up yerself bro, it wasn't that flash...
I.e. you are supposed to be humble and self-deprecating, and mean it.
It's kind of a blend of pioneer spirit + maoritanga that is fading in the face of relentless heartless capitalism...
And we're not stupid...
Albert Einstein was working in a patent office and failed to see the benefits of patenting his equations of relativity!
If Isaac Newton or Wilhelm Leibniz patented calculus we would still be living in the stone age!