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)."

Comments

FOSS?

[Dantoo]

The guys name is FOSS! Sorry it's late. Hehehe.

Re:FOSS?

[one eyed kangaroo]

I do love me a bit of Nominative Determinism now and then....

Re:FOSS?

[shikaisi]

Hey, if one guy in New Zealand can call himself Kim Dotcom, what's wrong with the Commerce Minister calling himself Craig Foss? I understand that other members of the NZ government are already planning to change their names to Nathan Gnu, Nikki KayeDE, Hekia Pirate and that the Prime Minister will in future use his middle name in official business so that he will be called John Control Key.

Re:FOSS?

[Tablizer]

Next up, Larry Ellison will change his last name to "Vader".

Ttitle is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

New Zealand is only going to (try harder to) prohibit vague software patents. The language is still there to patent software.

Re:Ttitle is misleading

[arglebargle_xiv]

New Zealand is only going to (try harder to) prohibit vague software patents. The language is still there to patent software.

Not only that, but this hasn't made it into law yet. Expect to see intense lobbying by (mostly) US business interests to get this provision spiked before the law becomes final. It's happened before with other law changes for which the initial drafts seemed reasonable, e.g. in the field of copyright.

Re:Ttitle is misleading

[gstoddart]

Not only that, but this hasn't made it into law yet. Expect to see intense lobbying by (mostly) US business interests

Actually, I'd expect the US government to become heavily involved in this. They've been pushing copyright and IP laws on trading partners via treaties under threat of sanctions.

I just can't see the US government standing by quietly since the US has increasingly set themselves up to be an economy based on such things, and they've been using their clout to force everyone else to entrench laws to protect it.

Re:Ttitle is misleading

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Actually, I'd expect the US government to become heavily involved in this. They've been pushing copyright and IP laws on trading partners via treaties under threat of sanctions.

Yes, but the New Zealandese have already anticipated US the US moves by declaring a nuclear-weapons-free zone in and around NZ ages ago.

Re:Ttitle is misleading

[gstoddart]

Ah, yes, one of the few governments who might be willing to tell the us to PFO. Cool.

About time!

[Transfinite]

Let's hope the rest of the world will see sense and follow soon.

Makes sense

[vikingpower]

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....

Re:Makes sense

[StripedCow]

OTOH, from wikipedia:

Anti-intellectualism
Unlike many European countries, New Zealanders do not have a particularly high regard for intellectual activity, particularly if it is more theoretical than practical. This is linked with the idea of 'kiwi ingenuity', which supposes that all problems are better solved by seeing what works than by applying a theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_New_Zealand#Anti-intellectualism

Re:Makes sense

[dkleinsc]

On the third hand, in theory theory and practice are identical, while in practice they aren't. Those kiwis might be on to something there.

That's a different sort of anti-intellectualism than, say, active policy efforts in the United States to try to prevent kids from ever encountering scientifically proven ideas.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

The wikipedia entry is a troll. A more accurate interpretation of it is that people who are full of themselves are especially shunned, and those who skip the self promotion and just get on and do it are idolized. Kiwis have nothing against intellectuals, only those that go around telling everyone one else how dumb they are, but that sort of stuffed shirt person isn't held in high regard anywhere. There is also a deep suspision of those that wear ties, but that doesn't make the country anti-business, just anti-used car salesman.

Re:Makes sense

[K. S. Kyosuke]

which supposes that all problems are better solved by seeing what works than by applying a theory

How exactly is "seeing what works" supposed to differ from the scientific method?

Enjoy this program - unless you're American.

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re:Enjoy this program - unless you're American.

[SuricouRaven]

It's an old program. ASF was still in very common use when I wrote it.

ASF, WMA and WMV are actually the same format. The extension difference is only for convenience, to tell which ones have video in.

Relationship with TPP?

[gwolf]

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.

Patents Should Have Never Been Granted on Software

[guitardood]

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.

Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense

[halfEvilTech]

Enough said. But I totally expect the US Government and other large multi-national corporations to heavily pressure them into ditching this idea.

A country with some sense.

[neghvar1]

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!!)

Re:Is this good or bad?

[ImprovOmega]

Because algorithms, like mathematical formulae are not so much developed as discovered. The same algorithm would've worked in caveman days on a rock-based Turing machine, it's just that we hadn't gotten around to finding it yet. It would be akin to patenting diamonds the first time they were discovered, and equally absurd. Now, you don't have to share your discovery with anyone, and you can certainly copyright your specific implementation of it, but patenting discoveries does the opposite of what the patent system was supposed to do which is to foster innovation. In point of fact the patent system fails pretty hard in fostering innovation right now, as quick as science is progressing.

Re:Good luck NZ

[Red_Chaos1]

I think you misread the intent of OPs comment. Maybe I'm being naive/altruistic, but I took it as a sincere "good luck" because as even us Americans know, "'Murica! Fuck yeah!" Corporate interests will lobby hard to fight NZ doing this. I think it's great, and I hope it paves the way for other places to admit the ridiculousness of it and strike it down as well.

Re:What I can't figure out

[Tablizer]

So, how is the pay at your Kansas textbook authoring job?

Re:Stupid

[Tablizer]

Hey, MS did fine without inventing.

Re:Is this good or bad?

[loneDreamer]

Even more. Patents have no mechanism to account from independent re-discovery, which is everywhere in CS.