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EU's Unitary Software Patent Challenged At the Belgian Constitutional Court
zoobab writes The Unitary Patent for Europe is being challenged at the Belgian Constitutional Court. One of the plaintiffs, Benjamin Henrion, is a fifteen-year campaigner against software patents in Europe. He says: "The Unitary Patent is the third major attempt to legalize software patents in Europe. The captive European Patent Court will become the Eastern District of Texas when it comes to software patent disputes in Europe. As happened in America, the concentration of power will force up legal costs, punish small European companies, and benefit large patent holders."
Unitary Rules!
"As happened in America, the concentration of power will force up legal costs, punish small European companies, and benefit large patent holders."
Really? The vast majority of patent trolls are typically very small entities that like to sue BIG companies for one obvious reason: Big companies have deep pockets.
I am aware of larger patent troll outfits that act as fronts for larger companies too. However, they are an exception not a rule and guess what.. they are also typically suing big companies but are used as a proxy so one big company doesn't have to sue another big company directly.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Of course, as a result of those individual country fees, hardly anyone files for patent protection in, say, Luxembourg, or Albania, or Latvia, because the markets aren't big enough to justify several thousand in fees per country (except in pharma, where they can just charge thousands of dollars per dose of medicine and get the costs back easily). In fact, generally, high tech inventors only get protection in the UK, France, and Germany.
As a result of not having patent protection in those other countries, companies also don't invest in those other countries... You're not going to open a manufacturing plant in, say, Portugal, even if the labor is really cheap, if you have no patent protection there and your competitor can simply open a plant across the street and spy through your windows. Nor are you really going to focus marketing efforts in those countries, if your competitor can simply buy the product and reverse engineer it. So, you end up with 1st world Europe in UK/FR/DE, and 2nd (or 3rd) world Europe everywhere else.
The Unitary Patent, on the other hand, is an actual European Patent. Rather than nationalizing in each individual country, you get a single European Patent that is enforceable everywhere in Europe. It doesn't make software patents legal - and in fact, software patenting is explicitly not allowed in Europe already, and this doesn't change anything about it - it just makes the filing and fees more straightforward, while extending protection into those other countries.
The other thing it does - and Slashdot should like this - is that it creates a Unified Patent Court that hears cases on infringement and validity of European patents. And it's not just one old fart in a black robe who doesn't use email and 12 idiots who had the day off from work, it's actually panels of three specialist judges who only hear patent cases and have appropriate scientific or engineering backgrounds (there's a mechanical division, a chemical division, and an electrical division).
Now, there is some opposition to the Unitary Patent, but it's not "zomg, this legalizes software!" Instead, it's coming from companies in those countries that no one bothers getting a patent in that actually are doing reverse engineering of competitor's products. And yeah, they should be upset, because this would force them to come up with their own inventions rather than just stealing everyone else's.
Disclaimer: I am a U.S. patent attorney, I'm not your attorney, this is not legal advice, etc.
This is an early warning sign of encroaching European federalism. Your grand children will think of themselves as Europeans, pay homage to that government, and turn to it for legislation rather than France, or Germany, or Luxumburg, the New York, California, and Rhode Island of Europe.
What state do you live in? "I live in United Kingdom!"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I can't understand the reasoning of granting patent protection in a state without the grantee providing a translation to the main lanaguage(s) of that state. Of course it saves time and money, but the whole point of the patent system is the trade of the public disemination of information for certain rights to the ideas. If you don't translate to the main language(s) of a state, how are you satisfying the disemination requirement? It should simply be the cost of doing business. If you don't want to translate your patent to Swedish, it should not be valid in Sweden.
It's true that for software patents are specially absurd. But come on, this is 2015. You can come up with examples of businesses where innovation is not profitable without the monopoly, and many others where patents kill innovation, but in general we have more innovation than we need. There's so much research and innovation that nobody is able to keep track of what is known, not even a gigantic patent office, and so there is no hope for quality in any patent system.
There's so much innovation that they'll invent the problem to be able to sell the solution, they use new tricks so that there is not enough matching experience to see it's as good or bad as always and sell anew, and they force patented standards on consumers just to ensure patent royalties. Even in fields where we really need innovation (like medicine) the patent systems sucks away resources than should go to unbiased research (not long ago frustrated researchers complained of having to abandon research on possible effects of green tea in some diseases because nobody funds a cure they can't patent).
The patent community has clearly shown that they are unable to ensure their work is useful for society. They can't stick to patentable sbject matter, specify narrow claims, ensure novelty or non-obviousness, provde disclosure that helps anyone skilled in any art, or make sure that the monopoly helps get products to market instead of keeping them out.
The patent system is a scam and a bubble bigger than the real state. Let's just close the patent offices and simply institute watchdogs for quality, honesty and safety for people and the environment. If we haven't found competent and honest examiners, attorneys and judges in all these years able to keep the patents where they might have some use, we won't have them tomorrow. Setting up yet another patent court will not help. The patent system looked theoretically useful around the industrial revolution, was tried, has failed, and we should get rid of it and concentrate in important problems such as hunger, war, pollution, injustice, ignorance, greed, and plain lies instead of self-proclaimed innovation boosters, inventors egos and tycoon wet dreams.
We had a reform once to get rid of the papal bulls, may we have one now to get rid of the EPO bulls ? (without the religion wars this time, please).
The comparison to the US is not an argument in his favor.
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Software is something the US successfully exports. All the big software things started in the US (and now Linus Torvalds lives there as well). This happens because investors in the US can expect to get returns on their risks/investments with less fear that another entity will profit off their risk and entrepreneurship leaving the risk takers without jobs.
Same thing with the movie industry. Movies are frequently pirated in the EU. Where are movies made? Not the EU.
Same thing with drug research. It stopped happening in Europe a while back.
So the slashdot people say all this innovation and advancement and job openings in the US is a race to the bottom. I just don't get it
Don't get me wrong, OSS will always have its place, but it is always a matter of, "Hey, Adobe's product isn't that much better than the free version. I can put the stuff I want into the free version for cheaper than getting Photoshop." And in the competition both the proprietary and the OSS options advance.
The vast majority of patent trolls are typically very small entities that like to sue BIG companies for one obvious reason: Big companies have deep pockets.
It's not just patent trolls.
When a big technology company is in trouble, one thing they may do to try to stay alive is go through their portfolio of patents and sue everybody doing anything related to them. This is in the hope that they can pull in enough cash to stay alive a few more months, by finding actual infringement on discovery, or just provoking a patent cross-licensing-and-balancing-cash deal to make the suit go away.
About a decade ago I was on the receiving end of such a suit: My project had done some chips that included some new SONET functionality. Nortel was getting desparate and went after everybody doing SONET, so my project (and a few others) were related. I got called in to advise the lawyers on how what we did was different from the claims. (It was - drastically.) I hear that one ended up in a "swap and we pay some cash" settlement.
This was the only time I recall actually being asked to look at another company's patent on what we were doing. Companies - at least in the US - try to keep their engineers from looking at other patents, because knowing you're infringing triple. So we get to reinvent various wheels rather than raise the risk. That means one of the claimed advantages of patents - releasing recipies for the neat technology to general use after the patents expire - is about as bogus as the ever-extended copyrights.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Companies - at least in the US - try to keep their engineers from looking at other patents, because knowing you're infringing triples the damage awards.
I hate the keyboard and trackpad on this Toshiba Satellite S75. (It's just as bad as the ones on the Lenovo Z710, too.) Overly-wide, ultra-thin, chicklets, with no clearance for fingernails. Brush the trackpad while typing and half a sentence is highlighted and instantly overwritten by the next keystroke, making it disappear. Typos up the wazoo. In nearly a year I haven't been able to get used to these designs.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
the EU is OBVIOUSLY just a huge corrupt carcass of a lobby heaven....stuffed with extreme wasteful expenses and at the same time IMPOVERISHING THE EUROPEAN POPULATION...
AS SOON AS POSSIBLE ALL PEOPLE SHOULD FIGHT TO END THE EURO AND THE EUROPEAN UNION !
The Euro patent legislation specifically bans software patents "as such". But the EPO has interpreted "as such" to means only "pure software" that does does not run on a computer is unpatentable. Once it runs on a computer, it is no longer "as such" and therefor patenable.
Does not make sense, but who cares if you are the judge, jury and executioner. Unified patent is pure evilness.
They have to go. No more, i am your boss now give me everything forever whether i use it or not!