You mention a company where I have a foot (actually only some toes) in door, and I already had a lot of informal discussions with my contacts about this issue. But typically they're too distanced and too busy minding their own corner to care. With a wait-and-see approach businesses in Belgium tend to be very reactive regarding politics.
It's true it's very difficult to mobilise companies. Maybe showing them them the presentation linked here can help. And otherwise, maybe showing them this will wake them up. Note: those are (in this case) only patent applications, not granted patents. There is little doubt that most if not all of them will be granted though, and they undoubtedly will all be enforceable if a text like the one of the Council of Ministers is approved (unless prior art is found, but you won't be able to invalidate them because they are software patents or business method patents).
I've also talked to a quite highly positioned person at Alcatel, but they take a very, very pro-patent stance since they feel it's a thing that can protect them from Chinese competition/rip-offs. Being a big business, they don't care about the cost, as the lawyers add to their meat mass and hence their visible profile.
Ah yes, the "yellow danger". This is a nice story about that. But they won't care about that either, I assume.
Non-IT businesses are even worse. Talking to them about this is like talking about a math problem to a baker. They simply have other things to do.
One (huge, Belgian) non-IT company already called the Belgian ministry of economics in May, but I can't tell their name unfortunately. They were indeed the exception to the rule, though.
Done the FaxYourMp thing already, but it seems that the EU parliament website is really not set up to make it easy to find your MEP at all. Any suggestions on how to go about this?
See here (for the UK at least, others simply can go here and click on their country's flag to get their list of MEPs).
Please do verify what I wrote, I have the feeling I may be mixing up things.
Indeed, you are. The Dutch minister had said there was an agreement over the text between the European Parliament and the Council, so that there was no problem to support it. Afterwards, this was shown not to be true, so the Dutch Parliament voted a motion asking the Dutch government to change into an abstention. The government claims it's fulfilling this motion, why in fact it is not.
I *think* this is what is happening. The Council is formed from the ministers of the Member States of the Union.
Correct. Note that although the Council is a single legal/political body, depending on the subject that's handled different ministers attend.
It proposes legislation on the advice of the EU Commission (yet another body made up of appointed bureaucrats whose purpose is to develop and uphold the workings of the Union).
No, the Commission proposes the legislation (possibly on advice of the Council, I'm not sure).
This directive has been proposed under the so-called co-decision arrangement with the European Parliament - the directly elected body of the EU.
In co-decision, Parliament has some measure of veto over the Council - it is the strongest of the arrangements between the parties. Council has sent the draft directive to Parliament.
No, the Commission did.
Parliament could adopt the proposed legislation - whereupon it would have taken effect in the EU, instead it proposed amendments.
Indeed. It could have also downright rejected it, in which case the directive project would be stopped immediately.
The amendments have then gone back to Council which now has a choice. It can choose to accept Parliament's amendments and produce a compromise directive. Or it can override Parliament - but only by a unanimous vote by the members of Council. This is why the Poles are being strong-armed.
No, if the Commission agrees with the amendments they propose (which it does), they only need a qualified majority (basically 2/3rds of the weighted votes + a minimum number of supporting countries). Since 1 November, the voting weights have changed and now Poland is required to have a qualified majority.
If Council rejects the Parliamentary amendments and fails to vote unanimously, the legislation must then head towards conciliation and arbitration which is brain-bleedingly complicated since the Commission becomes involved.
No, if the Council does not manage to get the required majority, the directive is in limbo. In theory, it can stay forever at the Council's first reading stage (unless the Commission retracts the proposal). Conciliation only happens later in the process. First, after the Council agrees, it goes back to the European Parliament for a second reading.
There, the EP can only amend the text that returned from the Council with absolute majorities (nr_of_MEPs/2+1 must vote in favour in order for an amendment to be accepted, regardless of how many MEPs are actually present for voting).
Next, if the EP accepts the text without amendments, the directive is approved. It can also be downright rejected. Finally, if it's accepted with amendments it goes back to the Council for a second reading.
I don't know the exact rules in the Council for second reading, but if they accept the Parliament's amendments the directive is again approved, and if they amend it, it goes back to the EP for the third reading.
In the third reading, the EP can only say yes or no. If they say no, then conciliation happens.
So all is not lost, the insitutions are working, although I have to wonder about the fisheries involvement. I would have thought those ministers have their own problems at the moment.
An item at a Council session can either be a A-point (formality for approval) or B-point (discussion point). Because the Council reached a political agreement in May, it's technically possible to bring it as an A point on the Council for formal adoption of a Common Position (which would mean official acceptance by the Council).
Such an A-point can happen at any Council formation. So even though the competitiveness formation is responsible for the swpats, if they bring it on as A-point they can indeed have it signed at the Fisheries Council session.
Not all of them are bad. At least you have some very good MEPs who are on our side, like Piia-Noora Kauppi. I don't know about national politicians though.
Yes, getting more Belgian companies/businesses to speak out against software patents, because the Belgian ministry's position is ambiguous at best. There was already a nice statement in May, but we need bigger companies. Companies like e.g. Telindus and Belgacom. Telindus has exactly 1 patent (on some modem modulation technique), Belgacom has 5 (none of them software patents).
Telindus is now an integrator/services company. It provides services for e.g. the Flemish government. Another company that does so is EDS (US company), and Accenture (US as well) does so for the Federal Government. Both EDS and Accenture are applying for business method patents like there's no tomorrow. If software patents are introduced, it won't take that long anymore until Telindus can only do things it gets permission for from EDS and Accenture, unless it starts wasting money on its own patent portfolio. Similarly, Belgacom also only stands to lose from the introduction of software patents.
However, to get into these businesses, you have to be a business yourself or (preferably) know somebody on the inside. I don't. Do you? If not, do you maybe know people who do? If so, please get them in touch with me (my email address appears mangled in the header of this post).
So your solution to rampant government power is... to give the government more power! Brilliant!
No, to redistribute the power.
Seriously, though, if this were done, what would happen when a pro-patent Parliament is elected? Then you would probably be clamoring for Parliament to be stripped of its right to make laws.
No. The reason we want more power for the parliament is that it's the only part of the EU that's directly elected. They are also the most transparent part, the most responsive part and the most easily reachable part (by "common" people). And there's 732 of them, which automatically gives you a more diverse bunch (at least with political diversity we have in Europe).
This has little to do with EU-specific stuff. The Council of Ministers consists of ministers from the various national governments, and it's them who are pushing this through. It's Sweden covered by Ericsson and Scania, Finland by Nokia, the Netherlands by Philips, Ireland by all US companies it provides a low tax haven for etc.
For the record: if the Council approves its pro-software patents text, all is not yet lost since there is still a second reading in the European Parliament. A downside of this second reading is that the EP can only amend the Council's text using absolute majorities there (i.e., half the number of MEPs must vote in favour of an amendment, regardless of how many abstain or are even present at the vote).
The big news is however that the Council Presidency is basically trying to circumvent the Council itself. In May, they reached a political agreement on the most pro-software patents text seen in EU legislative circles until now. At the Council meeting in May, Poland first abstained, then Germany and the Commission introduced some fake compromise amendment, and after a break Poland was not consulted again about its position, because there was a qualified majority in place even without its support. They confirmed afterwards their position did not change because of the bogus compromise amendment.
Recently, Poland confirmed its position, after everyone in a meeting with HP, Novell, Microsoft and others confirmed that the text of the Council of Ministers allows pure software patents (contrary what is often claimed). And apart from Microsoft and the Polish Patent Lawyers association, everyone agreed that software patents would be bad for the Polish economy. Because the voting weights changed on 1 November (due to the joining of all the new member states to the EU), Poland's support suddenly became necessary and thus the qualified majority was officially broken.
So the Council currently has an ugly text on the table which is no longer supported by a qualified majority in any way, but by means of diplomatic pressure on Poland and others the Dutch presidency (lead in this case by Minister Brinkhorst) is trying everything it can to push it through nevertheless.
Which is why the large companies now support Myhrvold, which will simply buy up the Forgents of this world to add their patents to its own portfolio and extract money about it from others.
I.o.w., the large companies will now own the largest patent troll of them all, which will work for them and consume the smaller annoying ones.
If I send you a BS bill for $50 and you pay it, it's your fault, not mine.
No, it's how the patent system works in practice, because a small company can chose to go out of business, or to pay the bill. Even if you are in your right and the patent gets invalidated, the costs of a patent lawsuit range from $US 1 to 4 million dollars per side (slide 9).
Now, if you've got a suggestion to protect small players from frivilous litigation, I'd love to hear it.
The problem is that these lawsuits are generally not frivolous according to the inherently low standards of the patent system. There is no magic bullet to solve either that problem or the problem of small companies being disadvantaged in court cases, which is exactly why the general effects of patents in a particular field have to very beneficial in order to have a rationale to introduce/keep them there.
From a national economic standpoint, even the US has an incentive to pump out as many patents as possible, no matter how frivolous, in order to extract money from corporations in other countries
In the speech, Martin says the Chinese are looking at the enforceability of a lot of patents from foreign companies. Declaring them unenforceable would doubtlessly get the US government angry. So then they can leverage the debt, I suppose. Besides, I don't think many US companies would profit from an even weaker dollar either (in case the Chinese would throw part of all the dollars they have on the market).
Halo1, i see you are still spreading FUD and demonstrating how little you really understand about this. first of all, "everything under the sun" has NOTHING to do with software patents. that was the language that was used in Diamond v. Charkrabarty to affirm the patentability of micro-organisms.
I was not referring to any particular court case. I merely meant that the proponents of software patents are generally proponents of unlimited patentability (except sometimes for business methods, keeping in mind that "technical" business methods such as one-click shopping have to be remain patentable). Unlimited = anything under the Sun.
but it would make your side look bad to recognize that patents on software is a actually a far bigger economic issue than the narrow interests of "software" companies. you think this is YOUR debate and you ignore everyone else. big mistake, amigo.
Absolutely not, it is a fact that the software patents debate is much wider than just software development or the ICT sector. Software is used everywhere nowadays, it's a so-called "enabling" technology. In fact, most software patents are owned not by software companies, but by traditional manufacturing and electronics companies.
The reason is simple: those companies have always protected their innovations using patents. Currently, they are moving more and more stuff to the software field because it's easier and cheaper (otherwise they would keep using their old ways). But they want to keep using the ways of old to protect their innovations. It's plain innertia.
It's making a television that becomes more and more like writing software, and not writing software becomes more and more like making a television. Unless there are extremely good reasons, it does not make sense to change the whole IPR system of the software world simply because those companies cannot adapt to this fact.
bingo! give the man a prize. this is the problem Halo1, because you people are acting like a bunch of tree-hugging dimwits, the professional patent community is IGNORING you when actually your side has some perfectly valid points that should be heard and should be considered
but no, it's much more fun to scream and yell and call people names. it's not only childish, it's counterproductive to your "cause."
I don't call people names. You do. Axel Horns does. Simon Gentry does. Alex Pfeiffer does. You anecdotical evidence is as weak/powerful as mine.
why do you think that axel horns and many others dismiss you as a "bunch of communists?"
Because they can't cope with the fact that they aren't the only ones that have anything to say in this debate. They don't even want to consider any form of systematic limitation of patentable subject matter. They try to paint us as communists, open source hippies, anti-globalists, anarchists, family-terrorising psycho's (honestly, in front of MEPs no less!) and who knows what else, because... I don't know why. Because they ran out of sane arguments?
software IS different, but it is not so bloody different that it should not be patented at all
however some special considerations have to be made.
And how exactly did you want to fit that in the TRIPs agreement?
that being said, i take a deep breath and try very hard to separate the message from the messenger because it is my job to be rational.
I never attacked you personally. I simply pointed out how "rational" Axel Horns is from time to time in his blog. If you want to see rational ar
being somewhat involved in these discussions, i can tell you that the NO SOFTWARE PATENT attitude and the petulancy with which it is aadvanced is getting Open Source no where fast.
I really wonder where that open source obsession of all you pro-software patent people comes from. You guys even seem to think FFII is some kind of open source lobbying organisation. Maybe the fact that this easily shown to be false when talking to politicians is one reason that we have been so successful until now, as that immediately raises doubts about other things that may have been wrongly described by your side.
the FFII and others cannot even define precisely what a "software patent" is and most of the arguments boil down to no patents period - which is never going to happen.
Nice copy/paste from Axel Horns' blog (maybe you're even him?). He has even linked to your post.
There is a very simple definition though, which we even spread to all MEPs in September: software patents are patents that cover computer programs. There, that wasn't hard, was it? Of course, that's not a juridical definition ready to go in the directive, but that's what we want to exclude.
And unlike what Mr. Horns says, this does not per definition exclude everything that is computer-implementable. We do think it would be best for innovation and the economy (and moral reasons) if all pure logic/math advances were excluded from patentability regardless of what devices they are applied to (and most economists are even with us on that), but we are prepared to compromise.
Our constituents' basic interest is to keep the software free from patents, regulated by copyright only. I.e. even if there are patents on the much cited "anti-lock braking system", "washing machine", "intelligent vacuum cleaner" etc, they must apply only to the makers and users of the devices, not to people who create or provide software (= control logic, similar to user manuals) for these devices.
However, there has been no sign at all from the "everything under the Sun should be patentable" camp that they are the least interested in a compromise. For them, it's indeed all or nothing it seems.
instead of engaging the pro-patent side in thoughtful debate and trying to reach a compromise, Open Source is shooting themselves in the head by taking such a strident anti approach.
If you still mean FFII with "Open Source", we're actually taking very much a "pro" approach. How many conferences with economists from all over the world has the "pro" side organised?
my colleagues are of the opinion that the best way to combat the anti-patent forces is simply to let them speak and make fools of themselves in front of the parliament. it seems to be working. emotion and passion are simply no substitute for sustained debate.
Yes, sure. Sustained debate like this?:) "Semantical wafare", "vast armies of volunteers", "They must not be allowed to "occupy" any of the long-standing concepts of patent law." Claiming that only patent lawyers and others from the "IP incrowd" should be listened to in this debate.
at the end of the day, friends, the EPO is not controlled by the EU and even if the EU does nothing the situation at the EPO and in the member states of the EPC will remain unchanged.
You might actually want to talk to the people of the EPO. They have publicly stated that they will follow the EU directive, whatever the outcome. Besides, patents have to be enforced under member states' laws, whi
The OP is probably referring to this IP attorney (unless that's he himself), as the post is pretty much a repeat of what he says. That's a guy that just stopped short of calling FFII and friends terrorists. It is a "war" in which patent law is "occupied" by "vast armies of volunteers". Only lawyers should have any say in what goes in the directive. etc etc. No, I'm not making this up, read his blog.
Is it still cynicism when it's based on past experiences?
No, but it's cynicism if you change your argument in something you can't know and expect the worst. First it was "they say A and will do B". When it turns out this was not the case, now it's "But they will do so later". I'm not sure what your goal is. Show that you are the ultimate realist on slashdot? Save us from disappointment should we not succeed?
Thank you, now please go back to knowing that you cannot do anything and leave those that actually do something fight for what they feel is worth fighting for.
Those resources are in loans (that make up the US national debt) correct?
So, how do they bring those to bear? What will they do? The only people they can threaten are the US companies in court, who don't own the debt, not the government.
Afaik the US government itself also has a huge deficit. They have to get their money from somewhere. I have to admit I'm not very familiar with how that works, though.
a lot of resources to challenge bad patents in courts
indeed political leverage (they can make the dollar completely worthless in an instant), but I doubt it would be used to change US patent laws. After all, "thanks" to the fact that it's so bad, they now have power over those companies (in the sense that they could drastically reduce the patent portfolio of those companies, thus reducing their value)
David Martin's thesis is that the system of bad patents comes back to haunt those who abuse it to get overly broad exclusion rights on trivial stuff. And that as such an overhaul of the system is actually desirable for everyone, including for those big companies that currently abuse it to gain market power. In the short term, it would reduce the value of their portfolio a lot, but in the long term they would profit from it because the patents they would get, would actually have intrinsic value.
Read it again. They are not going to ignore IP law. They have contractual consent to use many of those patents. And they own 43% of the US currency, plenty to challenge bad and annoying patents from US companies if they are in the way. Given that many of those patents "aren't worth the paper they've been printed on", it shouldn't be too hard to invalidate them.
In effect, they are leveraging the broken system of IP law against the US or, as Martin puts it, they're going to pull the pin out of the grenade and throw it back.
Slashdot Mirror
Coreper are the permanent representatives (i.e., diplomats). They are supposed to simply follow orders from their national ministries.
There, the EP can only amend the text that returned from the Council with absolute majorities (nr_of_MEPs/2+1 must vote in favour in order for an amendment to be accepted, regardless of how many MEPs are actually present for voting).
Next, if the EP accepts the text without amendments, the directive is approved. It can also be downright rejected. Finally, if it's accepted with amendments it goes back to the Council for a second reading.
I don't know the exact rules in the Council for second reading, but if they accept the Parliament's amendments the directive is again approved, and if they amend it, it goes back to the EP for the third reading.
In the third reading, the EP can only say yes or no. If they say no, then conciliation happens.
An item at a Council session can either be a A-point (formality for approval) or B-point (discussion point). Because the Council reached a political agreement in May, it's technically possible to bring it as an A point on the Council for formal adoption of a Common Position (which would mean official acceptance by the Council).Such an A-point can happen at any Council formation. So even though the competitiveness formation is responsible for the swpats, if they bring it on as A-point they can indeed have it signed at the Fisheries Council session.
Not all of them are bad. At least you have some very good MEPs who are on our side, like Piia-Noora Kauppi. I don't know about national politicians though.
This is about the EU Council of Ministers. The story summary has it wrong.
Telindus is now an integrator/services company. It provides services for e.g. the Flemish government. Another company that does so is EDS (US company), and Accenture (US as well) does so for the Federal Government. Both EDS and Accenture are applying for business method patents like there's no tomorrow. If software patents are introduced, it won't take that long anymore until Telindus can only do things it gets permission for from EDS and Accenture, unless it starts wasting money on its own patent portfolio. Similarly, Belgacom also only stands to lose from the introduction of software patents.
However, to get into these businesses, you have to be a business yourself or (preferably) know somebody on the inside. I don't. Do you? If not, do you maybe know people who do? If so, please get them in touch with me (my email address appears mangled in the header of this post).
This has little to do with EU-specific stuff. The Council of Ministers consists of ministers from the various national governments, and it's them who are pushing this through. It's Sweden covered by Ericsson and Scania, Finland by Nokia, the Netherlands by Philips, Ireland by all US companies it provides a low tax haven for etc.
Don't worry, it's still far from over. You'll still get plenty of chances to refer back to those posts.
The big news is however that the Council Presidency is basically trying to circumvent the Council itself. In May, they reached a political agreement on the most pro-software patents text seen in EU legislative circles until now. At the Council meeting in May, Poland first abstained, then Germany and the Commission introduced some fake compromise amendment, and after a break Poland was not consulted again about its position, because there was a qualified majority in place even without its support. They confirmed afterwards their position did not change because of the bogus compromise amendment.
Recently, Poland confirmed its position, after everyone in a meeting with HP, Novell, Microsoft and others confirmed that the text of the Council of Ministers allows pure software patents (contrary what is often claimed). And apart from Microsoft and the Polish Patent Lawyers association, everyone agreed that software patents would be bad for the Polish economy. Because the voting weights changed on 1 November (due to the joining of all the new member states to the EU), Poland's support suddenly became necessary and thus the qualified majority was officially broken.
Other notable events since the political agreement of May are the fact that in July the Dutch Parliament asked its government to change position from being in favour to abstention, and at the start of this month all parties of the German Parliament did the same.
So the Council currently has an ugly text on the table which is no longer supported by a qualified majority in any way, but by means of diplomatic pressure on Poland and others the Dutch presidency (lead in this case by Minister Brinkhorst) is trying everything it can to push it through nevertheless.
I.o.w., the large companies will now own the largest patent troll of them all, which will work for them and consume the smaller annoying ones.
Because even though their boss is radical pro patents on anything, the ruling that required Sun to pay US$ 1 billion to Kodak scared the shit out of him.
In the speech, Martin says the Chinese are looking at the enforceability of a lot of patents from foreign companies. Declaring them unenforceable would doubtlessly get the US government angry. So then they can leverage the debt, I suppose. Besides, I don't think many US companies would profit from an even weaker dollar either (in case the Chinese would throw part of all the dollars they have on the market).
I was not referring to any particular court case. I merely meant that the proponents of software patents are generally proponents of unlimited patentability (except sometimes for business methods, keeping in mind that "technical" business methods such as one-click shopping have to be remain patentable). Unlimited = anything under the Sun.
FWIW, you might to write this 'one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America"' also an email noting that he doesn't know anything about it (see the paragraph that starts with "This change").
Absolutely not, it is a fact that the software patents debate is much wider than just software development or the ICT sector. Software is used everywhere nowadays, it's a so-called "enabling" technology. In fact, most software patents are owned not by software companies, but by traditional manufacturing and electronics companies.
The reason is simple: those companies have always protected their innovations using patents. Currently, they are moving more and more stuff to the software field because it's easier and cheaper (otherwise they would keep using their old ways). But they want to keep using the ways of old to protect their innovations. It's plain innertia.
It's making a television that becomes more and more like writing software, and not writing software becomes more and more like making a television. Unless there are extremely good reasons, it does not make sense to change the whole IPR system of the software world simply because those companies cannot adapt to this fact.
I don't call people names. You do. Axel Horns does. Simon Gentry does. Alex Pfeiffer does. You anecdotical evidence is as weak/powerful as mine.
Because they can't cope with the fact that they aren't the only ones that have anything to say in this debate. They don't even want to consider any form of systematic limitation of patentable subject matter. They try to paint us as communists, open source hippies, anti-globalists, anarchists, family-terrorising psycho's (honestly, in front of MEPs no less!) and who knows what else, because ... I don't know why. Because they ran out of sane arguments?
And how exactly did you want to fit that in the TRIPs agreement?
I never attacked you personally. I simply pointed out how "rational" Axel Horns is from time to time in his blog. If you want to see rational ar
I really wonder where that open source obsession of all you pro-software patent people comes from. You guys even seem to think FFII is some kind of open source lobbying organisation. Maybe the fact that this easily shown to be false when talking to politicians is one reason that we have been so successful until now, as that immediately raises doubts about other things that may have been wrongly described by your side.
Nice copy/paste from Axel Horns' blog (maybe you're even him?). He has even linked to your post.
There is a very simple definition though, which we even spread to all MEPs in September: software patents are patents that cover computer programs. There, that wasn't hard, was it? Of course, that's not a juridical definition ready to go in the directive, but that's what we want to exclude.
And unlike what Mr. Horns says, this does not per definition exclude everything that is computer-implementable. We do think it would be best for innovation and the economy (and moral reasons) if all pure logic/math advances were excluded from patentability regardless of what devices they are applied to (and most economists are even with us on that), but we are prepared to compromise.
As the document Mr Horns referred to earlier says:
However, there has been no sign at all from the "everything under the Sun should be patentable" camp that they are the least interested in a compromise. For them, it's indeed all or nothing it seems.
If you still mean FFII with "Open Source", we're actually taking very much a "pro" approach. How many conferences with economists from all over the world has the "pro" side organised?
Yes, sure. Sustained debate like this? :) "Semantical wafare", "vast armies of volunteers", "They must not be allowed to "occupy" any of the long-standing concepts of patent law." Claiming that only patent lawyers and others from the "IP incrowd" should be listened to in this debate.
You might actually want to talk to the people of the EPO. They have publicly stated that they will follow the EU directive, whatever the outcome. Besides, patents have to be enforced under member states' laws, whi
Thank you, now please go back to knowing that you cannot do anything and leave those that actually do something fight for what they feel is worth fighting for.
- a lot of resources to challenge bad patents in courts
- indeed political leverage (they can make the dollar completely worthless in an instant), but I doubt it would be used to change US patent laws. After all, "thanks" to the fact that it's so bad, they now have power over those companies (in the sense that they could drastically reduce the patent portfolio of those companies, thus reducing their value)
David Martin's thesis is that the system of bad patents comes back to haunt those who abuse it to get overly broad exclusion rights on trivial stuff. And that as such an overhaul of the system is actually desirable for everyone, including for those big companies that currently abuse it to gain market power. In the short term, it would reduce the value of their portfolio a lot, but in the long term they would profit from it because the patents they would get, would actually have intrinsic value.Read it again. They are not going to ignore IP law. They have contractual consent to use many of those patents. And they own 43% of the US currency, plenty to challenge bad and annoying patents from US companies if they are in the way. Given that many of those patents "aren't worth the paper they've been printed on", it shouldn't be too hard to invalidate them.
In effect, they are leveraging the broken system of IP law against the US or, as Martin puts it, they're going to pull the pin out of the grenade and throw it back.