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