In other words, once you get a good motherboard it'll stay good. If you keep getting bad ones, they'll die in a few months so just keep trying!
My motherboard only died after 10 months. The first replacement I got was a dud, though (system overheated after it was under full load for 40 minutes or so).
And I'm in more or less the same situation as the grandparent: I bought AppleCare 2 weeks ago because I didn't want to risk getting another dead motherboard after my warranty has expired... Yeah well, I guess I'll be able to recoup at least some of it in the form of a new battery in a year and a half or so probably.
I'm logged in and don't see it on the frontpage either. I suppose there's some preference you can set so all Apple stories do appear on the front page as well (which I've apparently not set).
Not that the system is much better in EU or other places
At this time, the legislation *is* better in Europe and if the Council of Ministers takes into account the standpoint of the European Pariament, it will get even more clear and better.
s, but practice in this matter seems to have a tendency to spread from the US to EU and so forth.;-)
That's indeed correct, one of the biggest lobbyists for introducing swpats in Europe is the USPTO. They even admit as much on their own website:
pursue substantive harmonization goals that will strengthen the rights of
American intellectual property holders
However, the "details of this action paper are by their nature sensitive and confidential, and therefore not appropriate for publication."
Is this just a minor side effect of a basically beneficial system that will simply work itself out as the patents are challenged? Or does this have to be fought?
Software/business method patents are not a basically beneficial system. That's agreed upon by most people, organisations and studies, from the FTC to even the owners of several mp3 patents, the Fraunhofer Institute. Even Andy Grove (you know, the guy that runs Intel) recently said they have a lot of negative effects (page 11 of the transcript, near the bottom).
If this is something that needs fighting, it would be good to know who is doing this, either on a grassroots level or as elected officials.
In Europe, it's mainly FFII that does this (along with the majority of the European Parliament, which completetly turned around a proposed directive to legalise software patents into one that explicitly forbids them).
In the US, I guess it's mainly the EFF and FSF, but I'm not very familiar with the situation there.
Algorithms are no more applicable to an infinite range of problems than any other tool.
An algorithm is not a tool, it's a way to use a tool. An algorithm defined in terms of usage on a generic computer is not in the least more specific than the algorithm described in terms of e.g. mathematical equations, and as such is applicable to anything you can do on a computer.
You just have to make sure you word your claims generic enough to be able to patent all ranges of problems that could ever be tackled with that algorithm (since a computer in turn can steer pretty much every machine to do whatever you want to do). That's what that infinite range of problems is about.
Some are highly specialized for a particular task, others have broad applicability. I suppose that you could say that a screwdriver or a lathe is "applicable to an infinite range of problems," because you can build an infinite number of different things with them. But tools are still patentable.
Yes, and a new kind of computer is that too. When you patent a screwdriver/computer, you do not patent every possible way in which that screwdriver/computer can be used.
I think the software patent thing is a tempest in a teapot, and will ultimately take care of itself.
I still have not heard one argument why we should find out whether it will. You're talking about it as if software patenting is some kind of end in itself. Pretty much all studies about it show mainly negative effects. Apart from patent lawyers and officials, almost nobody is in favor of them or thinks they are necessary to stimulate innovation in the software field. It has been shown in numerous studies (again recently in "one by the Fraunhofer Institute) that dynamics in the software development "industry" are quite different from that in the traditional industries...
Why keep on trying to shoehorn this patent system in place where it obviously is not fit for? Why not only introduce it at the moment that there is at least a theoretical possibility of encouraging innovation? And if such a general scenario can not be found, why not look for other possible?
But all of those broad, basic patents (the ones that survive the courts) are going to expire, and in a few years it won't be possible to get a software patent unless it is something truly innovative.
That's an often-heard argument of software patent proponents, but there is not a single guarantee for this. Patent law does not specify that something has to be "truly innovative" in order to be patentable. It just has to be new and non-obvious, and those two requirements combined are not a guarantee for "true innovativeness". That's not even really a fault of patent law, it's just the way the system was designed (and why it's not appropriate for software/logical reasoning).
And finally, the software patents that are granted today are no less broad nor trivial than those that were granted ten years ago, often it's even on the contrary.
This is the interpretation that US Supreme Court and Federal Circuit Court have imposed on the Patent Office.
I hope you see that reasoning does not make any sense. It's like saying that arsenicum as such is not deadly, but arsenicum when digested is deadly. Why don't they just admit that they do want to allow patenting of programs and algorithms, then we could get over this whole silly word game. It's obvious people will only claim useful usages of those things, since useless usages or non-usages are not going to turn up a lot of infringers...
It's just a matter of wording your invention and claims in the right way, not some kind of limit. The fact that the Supreme Court ruled that way, does not mean is the right/best way, they can also be wrong (just look at the FTC study). And it by no means indicates that we should blindly follow it in Europe.
In practice, however, the major costs in many research projects, whether or not experimentation is involved, are the human resources costs, with the experimentation, if any, being a minor element.
The major cost in software development lies most of the time not in researching the algorithms, but getting the details right. Software development projects to net get over date because they still haven't discovered how to get that super algorithm to work, but because there are show stopping bugs in the code. In all but the most simple software projects, debugging and polishing the software takes a lot more time, effort and money than coming up with ideas or algorithms.
And then you still left out the other arguments (algorithms are applicable to an infinite range of problems, and replicated at zero cost with no overhead to which patent license fees could be added).
Note that I'm not saying it is never the case that a lot of money goes into researching algoirithms. However, those investments can be protected by other means (e.g. trade secrets) (*). There is just no good deal for society to be found in patents on software and business methods. Since patents are a deal offered by society to innovators, society has the fullest right not to offer such a deal.
I think you should look at the bigger picture, instead of focussing on how you could interpret patent law so that you can make abstract reasoning patentable, as long as it's applied in a useful situations.
(*): please don't start about how that would deprive society of so many innovation, because it doesn't. Companies want software patents because it's supposedly so easy to copy their great innovations otherwise. And on top of that, programmers and computer scientists do not read patents to find new knowledge (source: common knowledge, and again the FTC study).
So a purely mathematical algorithm, no matter how original, is not considered patentable, but a use of that algorithm to do something of real-world value is patentable.
You really are completely following the EPO's (and Commissions, and JURI's) interpretation of "computer program as such". It goes like this: a computer program as such is not patentable. However, if that program running on a computer produces a "technical effect" (e.g., it makes the operation of the computer more efficient), then this program running on a computer is no longer a computer program as such but a "computer-implemented invention" and thus patentable.
This "limitation" of not allowing patents on "algorithms as such", but only on "algorithms executed by a computer" is not a limitation at all. I'm going to quote what FFII has to say about it, as they explain it perfectly here:
So on one side there are people who say: if physical processes are patentable, why should it make any difference whether they run on special hardware or on general-purpose hardware?
On the other there are people who say: if rules or organisation and calculation are not patentable, why should it make any difference whether I run them in my head, with pencil and paper or with the normal tool of today's civilisation, which is the universal computer?
And in fact the second argument is right, because the economic rationale behind not granting patents on thoughts applies also here: abstract ideas are, regardless of their applicability to technical problems, produced without experimentation cost, applicable to an infinite range of problems, and replicated at zero cost with no overhead to which patent license fees could be added.
The division of the extra cost of patents by the marginal cost (and long-term ideal price) of information goods is a division by zero. Moreover the deal between the inventor and the public, characterised as "monopoly on commercial implementation in return for disclosure of idea", is led ad absurdum: since between the idea and the application there is no invention, any adequate disclosure of the idea in turing-complete syntax risks to become an act of patent infringement.
The originality typically lies in the sequence of steps, not in the wet details of what kind of solvent or container, much as the originality of a software program lies in the sequence of steps, not the details of the computer hardware.
This is not about whether software can be original or not. A literary work can also be very original, both in the way it is written as well as the underlying story, subplots and used ideas (and the paper it is printed on is of much lower importance). Yet, society has decided not to award patents on nice story or plot ideas, regardless of how revolutionary and original they are.
There are very good reasons for that, and most of those reasons apply equally well to software. Software is different and patent law was not designed with it in mind. Neither was copyright, for that matter, which is why some people argue there should be a third paradigm between copyright and patents to specifically protect software (as explained on the last linked page).
Until we have discovered/developed such a paradigm however, copyright is much more suited to protecting software than patents are, since patents do more harm than good as shown once more bythe recent FTC study.
You basically can't patent something that's just "process on the internet". You have to invent a software method that's truly original (like say a new method of indexing/compressing).
I'm not sure what your source is, but this is completely wrong. The original proposal by the European Commission and the JURI committee for the directive on "Computer-implemented inventions" would have dragged European Patent law down to the level of US patent law as far as software patents are concerned.
The European Parliaments's version however, completely bans software patents. It's this democratically constructed version of the directive (instead of the one written by the BSA and patent lawyers) that we in Europe are now defending and fighting for.
The patent office is nowhere near capable of determining what is truly patentable in technology.
That's not true, it's patent law that is nowhere near capable of dealing with software (and business methods). These are purely abstract/theoretical fields, where almost all progress is consequential instead of revolutionary new. However, patent law does not make that distinction. Have a look at A problem of law, not of patent examination. Quote from the deputy director of the British Patent Office:
However, they [patent examiners, who are often programmers themselves] might express the communication problem the other way around - it's very difficult to persuade programmers that just because an invention is "easy", does not make it any less patentable.
This isn't really special to software patents. Even chemical or pharmaceutical patents are typically written to be as generic as possible, covering every conceivable way of achieving a particular end.
Absolutely, people will always try to get the broadest/most abstract/most generic claims possible. After all, if your claims are not broad enough, your patent is worthless since people can easily work around it. The broader the claims are, the more money you can get from them.
However, software is already abstract. It's just a set of mental rules, unlike a chemical reaction. It's easy to abstract it further and yet keep something that's more or less directly related to the described "invention".
Really? I thought they were associated with the FSF Europe. Or has it to be called "Free Software".
FFII is not associated with FSF (Europe or otherwise). FFII is not lobbing for open or free/libre software. Several companies that support us have absolutely nothing to do with FLOSS. Several of our goals are supported by the FSF of course, but they're just as well supported by e.g. Lemke Software, which has nothing to do with free software.
to make basic informational resources freely usable
to protect the creator against the plagiator and the public against monopolies
to give political weight to programmers, information-creating enterpreneurs and informationally literate citizens
There are much more basic and broader goals than those of the FSF.
I think a comparison to EFF would be more correct, although we're much smaller. And we're not affiliated with EFF either.
Those patents would all have become enforceable with the European Commissions and the JURI Committee's proposed directive. The European Parliament fortunately thwarted those plans. Support the European Parliament amendments and make sure your national government follows them!
And if you are part of a company that would be negatively affected by these patents, Call for Action II! To get listed publicly on that page, send a mail to <cpedu-help at ffii.org> and I'll add you. Thanks!
That's incorrect, FFII has very little to do with OSS. And this particular case (as well as the whole fight against software patents) has absolutely nothing to do with OSS.
The claims of this patent on the text pages on espacenet.com don't contain all claims in the finally granted patent. Those can be found in the B1 form (click on claims). Then you can see the first claim contains ordering a gift for someone by providing his/her email address.
It's FFII, as in Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure:)
is attacking the gift ordering patent, not the 1 Click paten
That's because FFII is a European organisation fighting against the introduction of software patents in Europe. One-click shopping was part of the same patent application, but was not granted because of prior art (and not because it was a software patent, even though software and business methods are not patentable according to the European Patent Convention!)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the case of patents, isn't it the collection of processes that is usually patented rather than the code itself?
Yes, and that's why software patents are so completely different from other patents. Normally, you get a patent on the implementation of some solution to a problem (a machine, a way to perform a chemical reaction, the use a certain chemical against a particular organism,...). You do not get patents on the generic process behind those innovations.
However, in software, the implementation of the solution is protected by copyright instead of by patents. The reasoning is that writing software is more like writing music or a story, than like constructing a light bulb or creating a new chemical substance. After all, you write/publish software like the former and unlike the latter.
So the implementation of both technical inventions and software are protected (by patents resp. copyright). The abstract reasonings that led to these end results should not be protectable in either case, because that harms innovation a lot more than it encourages it.
Software patents however do allow just that for software (and as such for basically anything, since you can do or steer pretty much everything using software).
The information will appear on the website. It's just that someone who is subscribed to that (publicly available) mailing list simply submitted a slashdot story about it before FFII was ready with preparations for the announcement.
Not much FFII can do about that... Damn freely available information;)
Yes, it's correct. This is what was posted on a mailing list (one without public archives):
Opposition
the Foundation for a Free Informational Infrastructure, represented by the president Hartmut Pilch, Munich, represented by president Hartmut Pilch, opponent,
- Trustees: Attorneys Dr. Matthias Lenhardt, Olaf Koglin and Holger Scharfenberg, Kurfuerstendamm 46, 10747 Berlin -
against the granted patent
European Patent EP 0 927 945
Registration no 99105948.6
Patent owner: amazon.com Inc., USA
in the name and with the authorisation of the opponent we request
to fully revoke the patent.
Justification:
A. Opposition causes
The opposition is based on:
the subject is not not an invention in the sense of art 52 paragraph 1 of EPC (Art. 100(a), Art 52 EPC) and does not involve an inventive step (Art 100(a), Art 56 EPC), and that the subject matter extends beyond the content of the application (Art 100(c) EPC, Art 123(2) EPC).
Oral proceedings are applied for
B. Justification in single steps
I. (Text by hartmut)
II.
Furthermore the opposition is justified by the justification of the oppositions of
a) Fleurop Interflora European Business Company AG of
26.09.2003
For any case - especially in case that the oppoisition is partially or fully revoked - those oppositions are made fully the content of the opposition.
III.
Opposition by Fleurop-Interflora European Business Company AG
IV.
Opposition by Gesellschaft fuer Informatik e.V.
C. Formalities
EUR 610 (by cheque) have been handed in before deadline directly by the opponent.
I maintain that software is to math as engineering is to physics.
I think it's more correct to say that software is to maths as stories are to spelling/grammar. That's why computer programs are protected by copyright instead of by patents. After all, you write/publish a computer program, unlike a light bulb.
Afaik, all other fields protected by patents directly relate to physics/chemistry/... (i.e., physical processes).
Nevertheless, keep in mind that the majority of the members of the European Parliament did listen to the people. Thanks to the European Parliament, the current version of the directive is one we want to defend, instead of one which we have to fight.
Slashdot Mirror
There's only an "exclude specific stories" from homepage in my preference, not a "show all stories from a specific section on homepage".
And I'm in more or less the same situation as the grandparent: I bought AppleCare 2 weeks ago because I didn't want to risk getting another dead motherboard after my warranty has expired... Yeah well, I guess I'll be able to recoup at least some of it in the form of a new battery in a year and a half or so probably.
I'm logged in and don't see it on the frontpage either. I suppose there's some preference you can set so all Apple stories do appear on the front page as well (which I've apparently not set).
In the US, I guess it's mainly the EFF and FSF, but I'm not very familiar with the situation there.
You just have to make sure you word your claims generic enough to be able to patent all ranges of problems that could ever be tackled with that algorithm (since a computer in turn can steer pretty much every machine to do whatever you want to do). That's what that infinite range of problems is about.
Yes, and a new kind of computer is that too. When you patent a screwdriver/computer, you do not patent every possible way in which that screwdriver/computer can be used. I still have not heard one argument why we should find out whether it will. You're talking about it as if software patenting is some kind of end in itself. Pretty much all studies about it show mainly negative effects. Apart from patent lawyers and officials, almost nobody is in favor of them or thinks they are necessary to stimulate innovation in the software field. It has been shown in numerous studies (again recently in "one by the Fraunhofer Institute) that dynamics in the software development "industry" are quite different from that in the traditional industries...Why keep on trying to shoehorn this patent system in place where it obviously is not fit for? Why not only introduce it at the moment that there is at least a theoretical possibility of encouraging innovation? And if such a general scenario can not be found, why not look for other possible?
That's an often-heard argument of software patent proponents, but there is not a single guarantee for this. Patent law does not specify that something has to be "truly innovative" in order to be patentable. It just has to be new and non-obvious, and those two requirements combined are not a guarantee for "true innovativeness". That's not even really a fault of patent law, it's just the way the system was designed (and why it's not appropriate for software/logical reasoning).And finally, the software patents that are granted today are no less broad nor trivial than those that were granted ten years ago, often it's even on the contrary.
It's just a matter of wording your invention and claims in the right way, not some kind of limit. The fact that the Supreme Court ruled that way, does not mean is the right/best way, they can also be wrong (just look at the FTC study). And it by no means indicates that we should blindly follow it in Europe.
The major cost in software development lies most of the time not in researching the algorithms, but getting the details right. Software development projects to net get over date because they still haven't discovered how to get that super algorithm to work, but because there are show stopping bugs in the code. In all but the most simple software projects, debugging and polishing the software takes a lot more time, effort and money than coming up with ideas or algorithms.And then you still left out the other arguments (algorithms are applicable to an infinite range of problems, and replicated at zero cost with no overhead to which patent license fees could be added).
Note that I'm not saying it is never the case that a lot of money goes into researching algoirithms. However, those investments can be protected by other means (e.g. trade secrets) (*). There is just no good deal for society to be found in patents on software and business methods. Since patents are a deal offered by society to innovators, society has the fullest right not to offer such a deal.
I think you should look at the bigger picture, instead of focussing on how you could interpret patent law so that you can make abstract reasoning patentable, as long as it's applied in a useful situations.
(*): please don't start about how that would deprive society of so many innovation, because it doesn't. Companies want software patents because it's supposedly so easy to copy their great innovations otherwise. And on top of that, programmers and computer scientists do not read patents to find new knowledge (source: common knowledge, and again the FTC study).
And do I deserve to get all these fsckin virus mails (and bounced virus mails) sent to me and the mailing lists I administer? Virus writers suck.
This "limitation" of not allowing patents on "algorithms as such", but only on "algorithms executed by a computer" is not a limitation at all. I'm going to quote what FFII has to say about it, as they explain it perfectly here:
There are very good reasons for that, and most of those reasons apply equally well to software. Software is different and patent law was not designed with it in mind. Neither was copyright, for that matter, which is why some people argue there should be a third paradigm between copyright and patents to specifically protect software (as explained on the last linked page).
Until we have discovered/developed such a paradigm however, copyright is much more suited to protecting software than patents are, since patents do more harm than good as shown once more bythe recent FTC study.
The European Parliaments's version however, completely bans software patents. It's this democratically constructed version of the directive (instead of the one written by the BSA and patent lawyers) that we in Europe are now defending and fighting for.
However, software is already abstract. It's just a set of mental rules, unlike a chemical reaction. It's easy to abstract it further and yet keep something that's more or less directly related to the described "invention".
Here's FFII's mission statement from homepage:
There are much more basic and broader goals than those of the FSF. I think a comparison to EFF would be more correct, although we're much smaller. And we're not affiliated with EFF either.Those patents would all have become enforceable with the European Commissions and the JURI Committee's proposed directive. The European Parliament fortunately thwarted those plans. Support the European Parliament amendments and make sure your national government follows them!
And if you are part of a company that would be negatively affected by these patents, Call for Action II! To get listed publicly on that page, send a mail to <cpedu-help at ffii.org> and I'll add you. Thanks!
The claims of this patent on the text pages on espacenet.com don't contain all claims in the finally granted patent. Those can be found in the B1 form (click on claims). Then you can see the first claim contains ordering a gift for someone by providing his/her email address.
However, in software, the implementation of the solution is protected by copyright instead of by patents. The reasoning is that writing software is more like writing music or a story, than like constructing a light bulb or creating a new chemical substance. After all, you write/publish software like the former and unlike the latter.
So the implementation of both technical inventions and software are protected (by patents resp. copyright). The abstract reasonings that led to these end results should not be protectable in either case, because that harms innovation a lot more than it encourages it.
Software patents however do allow just that for software (and as such for basically anything, since you can do or steer pretty much everything using software).
The information will appear on the website. It's just that someone who is subscribed to that (publicly available) mailing list simply submitted a slashdot story about it before FFII was ready with preparations for the announcement.
;)
Not much FFII can do about that... Damn freely available information
Yes, it's correct. This is what was posted on a mailing list (one without public archives):
Opposition
the Foundation for a Free Informational Infrastructure, represented by the president Hartmut Pilch, Munich, represented by president Hartmut Pilch, opponent,
- Trustees: Attorneys Dr. Matthias Lenhardt, Olaf Koglin and Holger Scharfenberg, Kurfuerstendamm 46, 10747 Berlin -
against the granted patent
European Patent EP 0 927 945
Registration no 99105948.6
Patent owner: amazon.com Inc., USA
in the name and with the authorisation of the opponent we request
to fully revoke the patent.
Justification:
A. Opposition causes
The opposition is based on:
the subject is not not an invention in the sense of art 52 paragraph 1 of EPC
(Art. 100(a), Art 52 EPC) and does not involve an inventive step (Art 100(a),
Art 56 EPC), and that the subject matter extends beyond the content of
the application (Art 100(c) EPC, Art 123(2) EPC).
Oral proceedings are applied for
B. Justification in single steps
I. (Text by hartmut)
II.
Furthermore the opposition is justified by the justification of the
oppositions of
a) Fleurop Interflora European Business Company AG of
26.09.2003
For any case - especially in case that the oppoisition is
partially or fully revoked - those oppositions are made
fully the content of the opposition.
III.
Opposition by Fleurop-Interflora European Business Company AG
IV.
Opposition by Gesellschaft fuer Informatik e.V.
C. Formalities
EUR 610 (by cheque) have been handed in before deadline directly by the opponent.
Afaik, all other fields protected by patents directly relate to physics/chemistry/... (i.e., physical processes).
PS: it's rapporteur :)