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German Parliament Tells Government To Strictly Limit Patents On Software
jrepin writes "On Friday the 7th of June the German Parliament decided upon a joint motion to limit software patents. The Parliament urges the German Government to take steps to limit the granting of patents on computer programs (PDF, German; English translation). Software should exclusively be covered by copyright, and the rights of the copyright holders should not be devalued by third parties' software patents. The only exception where patents should be allowed are computer programs which replace a mechanical or electromagnetic component. In addition the Parliament made clear that governmental actions related to patents must never interfere with the legality of distributing Free Software."
... like copyright did. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyright_term.svg
The only exception where patents should be allowed are computer programs which replace a mechanical or electromagnetic component.
Congratulations. You have just created legislation which will create a mechanical algorithm implementation industry.
Slide to unlock? That's a physical component that's existed for a long time.
Maybe skeuomorphics will come back into style because of this.
IIRC, the first software patent in the US was for the UNIX SUID/SGID bits, and that patent was for the mechanical imlementation, with an "oh by the way, you could do this in software, too" clause, which was the first step down the slippery slope that got us to where we are today. As to a direct answer to your question, how about a software implementation of RSA, rather than dedicated hardware? (Yes, I know, I know, for those of you about to quibble).
If security of the code is paramount, then wouldn't it make more sense that it be completely open, moreso than common utilities?
This has always been a mantra of cryptography; security by obscurity is not security.
computer programs which replace a mechanical or electromagnetic component
What would be realistic examples of this?
software based radio? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio
Excerpt:
A software-defined radio system, or SDR, is a radio communication system where components that have been typically implemented in hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by means of software on a personal computer or embedded system.[1] While the concept of SDR is not new, the rapidly evolving capabilities of digital electronics render practical many processes which used to be only theoretically possible.
A basic SDR system may consist of a personal computer equipped with a sound card, or other analog-to-digital converter, preceded by some form of RF front end. Significant amounts of signal processing are handed over to the general-purpose processor, rather than being done in special-purpose hardware. Such a design produces a radio which can receive and transmit widely different radio protocols (sometimes referred to as waveforms) based solely on the software used.
Software radios have significant utility for the military and cell phone services, both of which must serve a wide variety of changing radio protocols in real time.
IMO, free is not free enough. For a mechanical patent, you provide specifications that must be detailed enough so that after the patent expires, other companies can build it. If the other company has to clean-room the code and rewrite it from scratch, then the source code provides no additional benefit to other companies beyond the specification of the data structures and math and what not.
No, any software company that wants a patent should be required to publish that software under a 2-clause or 3-clause BSD license.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
computer programs which replace a mechanical or electromagnetic component
What would be realistic examples of this?
A clock.
Seems well-intentioned, but misguided. The problem with software patents is not that they do not have physical analogs. The problem with software patents is that: 1) nearly all of them are immediately obvious to anyone with reasonable software skills and probably get independently re-invented dozens of times a year, and 2) the nature of algorithms and software design means that any given software patent tends to cover much more than what would normally be considered a single invention (e.g. like "inventing" the idea of leverage or momentum). This is exacerbated by the fact that the value of a software patent in a war chest can greatly exceed any reasonable need to re-coup the investment in the actual invention.
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
Can copyright possibly be worse than patenting? Copyright seems better to me because
A patent locks down the idea: "Story Patent: hero rescues the princess from evil knight".
Copyright allows different versions of that story, e.g. Star Wars: Episode Four, A New Hope.
There are lots of books, songs, plays, movies, games (console, pc, online); the creative side of the entertainment industry manages.
Copyrighting software like we copyright books makes wayyy more sense to me than patenting software.
There are plenty of books about mathematics; programs too.
Patenting math seems... patently absurd?
4. to restrict patent law protection to software supportable teachings in which the co mputer program serves merely as a replaceable equivalent for a mechanical or electro - mechanical component, as is the case, for instance, when software - based washing machine controls can replace an electro - mechanical program control unit consisting of revol ving cylinders which activate the control circuits for the specific steps of the wash cycle;
Maybe it is lost in translation, but I think they would have to rule out mechanical and electro-mechanical computers from eligibility as the component. If they don't, everyone would claim their spreadsheet program is replacing a spreadsheet run on a Babbage machine. Might spur development of some pretty cool Colossus type computers though - that way the patent writers could point to an existing electro mechanical component.
Okay. You can have the right to patent anything you like so long as it only applies to things that you (or someone else) makes an actual, physical circuit to do.
So all those people running software on general purpose processors are not hindered in one bit and can replicate your methods (note: not necessarily your exact work) to their heart's content.
That's basically the situation specified and if you can't see how that differs from, say, someone patenting some obscure part of MPEG decompression and suing, say, VideoLAN for it, then you probably shouldn't be a patent lawyer.
Yes, all computer programs are Turing-compatible (if you like) and you can implement a computer using wooden blocks that modify a flow of water if you really wanted to - it's not hard. But the fact is that your patent shouldn't cover such a general range of specified equipment that nobody can ever use your technique on a general purpose computer.
What you've found isn't a "loophole", it's exactly the narrowing that someone has deliberately introduced. Patent holders will now be able to patent "an electrical circuit that does X" (maybe, possibly, if they jump through lots of hoops and nobody ever discovers their PUBLISHED patent and reimplements it somehow else) but not "any program on a general purpose computer that does X".
It's the right fix. It allows someone to invent, say, ABS and protect that invention. But it prevents someone from "inventing", say, a way to compress files by looking for common strings and building an index. Sure, you can make a computer that does the same as the circuit part of the ABS system, but you CAN'T make it actually control an ABS system without hitting the patent.
Seems that while other countries are stuck in their backwards application of patent law on technologies for which it was never intended, Germany is recognizing the significant repercussions of allowing such actions. The German Parliament has taken positive steps here to declare that it should not be allowed to be abused in such ways. Bravo, Germany! Bravo. Keep up the good work.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
On a related note: Canada threw out the patent for Pfizer's Viagra for this type of reason (U.S.C. 112 down here in the US). Pfizer didn't actually identify sildenafil in their patent, they just gave a set of chemical formulas with some of the positions as variables, and then a list of functional moieties (methyl, ethyl, butyl, futile) that can be placed at each position. Each formula thus covered millions or more actual compounds - which is standard operating procedure for patents of small molecule drugs. But most small molecule frug patents also have a claim that identifies the actual molecule specifically. Chemical patents also have to disclose the "best method" (some arguments there - lets call it a "reasonably good" method) of making the drug. For a software patent on an actual product to survive the same level of scrutiny, it would have to disclose both the source code and the techniques/APIs necessary for people skilled in the art to to write it, compile it, etc.
I've been documenting this and have all the background here:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/German_parliament_petition_against_software_patents
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
computer programs which replace a mechanical or electromagnetic component
What would be realistic examples of this?
Turing machines.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
You don't patent ideas, you patent implemenations of an idea to perform a useful function.
You don't patent math, you patent uses of math to perform a useful function.
I think I see what you're driving at, but does it matter?
Example: Consider Amazon's One Click patent ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click excerpts below ).
So... Amazon patented an implementation instead of the idea of One Click.
If that matters, help me understand why Apple licensed that patent (Wiki excerpt 2,below) instead of just creating their own implementation?
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Wiki Excerpt 1:
1-Click, also called one-click or one-click buying, is the technique of allowing customers to make online purchases with a single click, with the payment information needed to complete the purchase already entered by the user previously. More particularly, it allows an online shopper using an internet marketplace to purchase an item without having to use shopping cart software. Instead of manually inputting billing and shipping information for a purchase, a user can use one-click buying to use a predefined address and credit card number to purchase one or more items.
Wiki Excerpt 2:
Amazon.com in 2000 licensed 1-Click ordering to Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for use on its online store. Apple subsequently added 1-Click ordering to the iTunes Store and iPhoto.
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The mods who modded this up are morons who don't actually know anything about patents, but will happily parrot any idiotic thing they see on the interwebs if it happens to line up with their own idiotic thinking.
So... are you saying all is well in the Land of Patents then? Perhaps for the lawyers & trolls.
To my simple mind, it seems like a lot of headaches just go away if our society copyrighted software instead of trying to patent it.
Not only that, but I would have thought that if software replaced something that already exists in mechanical form, it could hardly be innovative. Rather it would be obvious.
An European convention from 1974 says software are not patentable. Member states included that in their laws. Many software patents have been granted anyway, but they cannot stand in court.
The EU commission tried to pass a directive to make software patent legal, but it has been defeated in European parliament (a quite rare event). EU commission now plan to make the European Patent Office the juridiction for patent cases, instead of regular courts. That way software patent would still be illegal, but the EPO would rule as if they were.
German parliament stance runs against that plan. But since 2008, we now the real masters in Europe are the German parliament and the German constitutional court. We can therefore trust them to prevail. If they managed to impose a suicidal economic policy for the whole continent, I guess they can impose something on the much more frivolous patent front.
It looks like they cribbed that "washing machine" clause from the New Zealand software patent reforms that happened recently.
There's some major appliance company in NZ that was big on protecting the patentability of their computerized washing machine features, and got that exception put into place. It's really, really lame seeing that almost verbatim in other countries' laws now. And yes, as written it's horribly game-able.