Yes, you bought it, tacked on terms are irrelevant. (IANAL)
"Seems to me the publishers already have told Google which books they don't want scanned"
* Yet that clause was put in those books prior to Google Book search existing, so it couldn't have been written with Google in mind.
* It fails the 'is this contract fair' test too, since the courts have repeatedly rules that you can reproduce portions of the books and it's fair use.
* The book publishers tolerate extracts in book reviews without complaint, and without attempting to enforce this clause, indicating acceptance of the worthlessness of this clause.
* Finally, some publishers are not complaining about Google Book Search, and their books have that clause, which suggests the first point is true (that that clause was not intended to block benefitial use).
So it's perfectly reasonable for Google to ask the publishers which books they don't want indexed by Google Book Search and a judge will find in their favour I reckon.
"Sent via: fax Re: Customer Support DMCA Complaints We have discovered a massive misappropriation of Perfect 10 images and images belonging to third parties on websites that appear in Google indexed listings. This situation is very serious as consumers can view essentially the entirety of the Perfect 10 library over and over without paying anything by utilizing Google search. Consumers can also see thousands of high quality third party copyrighted images without charge, which makes the situation even more damaging for our company."
"Perfect 10's copyrighted works which have been infringed can be found in Perfect 10 Magazines and/or on its subscription website at www.Perfect10.com. If you wish to examine such copyrighted works, we can provide you with a temporary username/password with which you may do so. Specific volumes of Perfect 10 Magazine, issue number, and page number on which most of the copyrighted pictures can be found are set forth below."
Perfect 10 blocked Google from indexing the site. Third party copied the content and put it on their own site. Google indexed that third parties site (not perfect 10's) compounding a existing copyright violation.
Whereas the book publishers can simply tell Google which books they don't want scanned and so they've given implicit permission by refusing to list those books.
Since fair use is a value judgement made by a judge interpreting a vague law, he sided with Perfect 10, but the same situation doesn't with the book publishers.
"It seems fundamentally unjust that a number of scientists could spend several years working on something but the one that finishes a few weeks earlier takes the entire reward."
Interesting point, yet isn't that the case with patents? Whoever gets in first kills everyone elses work. Not only that, the way a vague description is accepted for patents these days, the person getting the patent may just be a bullshitter with a vague description of something they haven't researched.
"Furthermore, the one that takes the reward in your system has guaranted security for life, so may as well immediately retire."
Just like Gates retired? Page?...
"When considering how many scientists actually change the world for the better, you can start by discounting the ones that work for military or security organisations..."
I don't see why you would do this, if you need a gun to defend yourself a gunmaker is a good guy. Also having a reward like that doesn't preclude commercial success as an alternative. If tail-fins sell then thats a commercial success and the inventor of tail fins can still make money that way.
From Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Manfred Broy Lehrstuhl für Software & Systems Engineering Institut für Informatik Technische Universität München:
"Producing a rigorous, complete, stand-alone specification for Microsoft work group server functionalities - or any software system of such enormous complexity - that is free of errors and omissions is beyond the state of the art and far beyond industrial practice"
So when an MS engineers dies, his secrets die with him? Nah. So MS engineers are a breed apart and they understand this and nobody else? Nah, not plausible. If they can pass the information internally they can pass it externally, they just don't want to.
I'd like to see it and judge for myself. Can someone give me a URL that I can just read it without agreeing any nasty EULAs or having to see their source code?
The problem with software patents is not copyright it's trade secrets. The source code is never released, so no database of prior art can cover any closed source software. The more innovative the algorithms, the more likely it will be strongly protected with tradesecrets and the less useful a prior art database would be.
Not only that, the source code isn't always a good description of an algorithm which is why every project I've ever worked on has lots of comments and documentation delivered with it.
So I don't see what the point of building a database of prior art actually achieves! How is it different from the GNU libraries? They're partial coverage of software available in sourcecode form too.
The point is, that Gonzales put his loyalty to the President above his duty to answer the legislative branch. When he talks to law students and the press he claims the President is acting legally when he bypasses the FISA, when he talks to Congress he simply refuses to answer the question.
This is the same thing, he's acting as a politician with an agenda rather than as a enforcer of the law. Google are right to refuse to be dragged into what is simply a political lobbying exercise.
If Gonzales can simply refuse to answer questions on the legality of domestic searches when he goes before Congress, then Google can refuse spurious warrants from Gonzales. The DOJ doesn't have a right to simply request any information for any reason, and its good that Google are fighting what seems to be a political thing rather than a law enforcement request.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- The Walt Disney Co. has sued a Swedish importer for copyright infringement and requested the destruction of 25,000 teddy bears it says are illegal replicas of Winnie the Pooh. The stuffed bears, which were made in China, were intercepted by Swedish customs in April and wear the "hunny" loving bear's trademark red shirt, according to a lawsuit filed with the district court in Malmoe, 340 miles southwest of the Swedish capital, Stockholm. They also have the same eyes, ears and nose and project "the same attitude and facial expression as Winnie the Pooh," the lawsuit said. Disney sued the importer, Malmoe-based Harle-quin Trade, to prevent the bears from being sold in Sweden, but the issue could be solved outside of court if the importer agreed to destroy the bears, attorney Ann-Charlotte Soederlund said. "Destroying teddy bears might seem a bit silly. But what if it's a pirate copy and it's dangerous and some child dies? Then Disney will be blamed," she said. Harlequin Trade president Hans Brefelt declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said his company had a "mutual understanding" with Disney. According to the lawsuit, Harlequin Trade reached a set-tlement with Disney earlier this year after trying to import alleged replicas of two other characters in the be-loved children's' stories created by British author A. A. Milne in the 1920s -- Piglet and Eeyore.
Slippery legal ground? They offer money to ISPs so it will be done by agreement, they only have to get one ISP in any area to sign up and that ISP will gain more customers who want to use the FON system.
Think about it, all other things being equal, if with one ISP you can use FON and with another not, and you can gain something from it (free roaming) then the ISP who accepts FON will get more customers, plus the revenue share FON are offering.
'Information security isn't secure when the algorithm's security depends on its secrecy"'
I think his point was that people will run images through this software and the software will say "fake" and users will believe it, even when it's wrong. The same problem is true whether closed or open source. They'll substitute the black box's definition of 'fake' for the real definition of fake because it's easier.
"A lot of "walk-ins" occur at embassies by people wanting to give information. Tapping the operator's phone and monitoring who calls would certainly be of use to counter-intelligence investigations."
Because it's such a long shot. Your assuming a person will defect from the monitoring country, that the spy will call just 1 Embassy (not any other government or USA consulate), that the defector will call ahead of time instead of just walking in, that you will learn enough to be useful and that (since Greece is an Allie!) he just won't walk into the police station or simply travel to any other schengen zone country. It's not plausible to me.
"Also, would only contract staff be able to work on those switches? Could anyone else have done it?"
I am assuming its an Ericsson switch engineer, which means it will typically be a contract staff or employee of Ericsson. The switch isn't on a public network, so the 'outside' hacker thing makes no sense. The switch doesn't know who has what telephone number, the billing system does that, and so how would they know which phone numbers to bug? Switch engineers aren't usually local guys, Ericsson busses its own staff and rents them to telcos on big hourly rates.
So that means (by emlimination) a country with an extensive intelligence agency (Russia/USA/UK/FRANCE/ISRAEL), able to place someone in Vodaphone capable of being hired as a configuring Engineer for Ericsson switches (UK/USA), and spies on just 1 phone in US embassy (USA).
It does seem to look like CIA. I wouldn't be suprised if its the tip of the iceberg. Those switch engineers work all of the world, not just Greece, EMEA, Asia, even USA included.
There was 1 phone in the US embassy bugged too. 1? Why only 1? Why only the USA Embassy? I reckon that's either to test it, or so it could be denied later ('well we were bugged too').
If it was Israel, China etc, I bet they'd bug all the western embassies - it would just be an extra line in a configuration file.
Plus I know a few Ericsson switch engineers and they are all US or UK contract staff which rules out China or Russia to me (but maybe that has changed, maybe Ericsson use Russian staff now?) and Turkey Cyprus or Albania, forget it! Where would they get switch engineers from?
I hate to jump to conclusions too, but it looks highly likely, especially given the domestic spying without warrant in the USA, and the UN Kofi Annan spying incident, and the claimed kidnapping of Greek citizens by US & UK agencies.
"Seriously, if Yahoo can maintain a profit at the #2 place, then there is no need to grow."
Until someone else comes along with new ideas and walks all over them. Thats what Google did to Altavista & Lycos, Altavista quit trying because it wasn't making big money and Google took their market away from them.
I talked (rather exchanged emails) this afternoon with Ricardo Baeza Yates, the man Yahoo hired to head their Spanish research arm and by the sound of it he's after the cream of any PhD's he can get, so I don't believe this woman when she says loser stuff like that. She's just spouting off.
"Everything else Google has done since then has fewer of those properties. "
I don't know about that, their 'Video' approach seems pretty good choices to me, depending on how it procedes. They could end up as 'the place' to go for a nights viewing if they play their hand right and thats big money worldwide.
"Then they could have stayed in their winning niche of "honest, non-obnoxious search"
You work in a bank right? a clerk? A quantity surveyor? I don't think its in the nature of people who set up businesses to play it safe and woudn't it be a boring world if they did? I just don't see what they have to lose, none of the things they've done require big capital investment except for the datacentres.
Patents only cover the places they're issued, and only the invention itself (so if you patent a better way to make chocolate, anyone outside your patent coverage can use your idea and sell you the resulting chocolate). So no.
"Those who want software patents will never agree to accept trade secrets instead, as they offer zero protection."
They are used extensively now, so it represents the status quo not a change.
EU implemented a database IP right to encourage production of databases, USA didn't. USA ended up with many more databases than EU. It didn't suddenly flip, we didn't wake up one morning and EU was far behind, it was a slow and steady change, more companies in the USA could enter the market, leading to more successes and slow competitive shift to the USA.
"Eight years after State Street, software innovation here in the U.S. is exuberant and growing, despite the doomsday predictions of naysayers. But I'm sure it's due to collapse any day now..."
Why would it collapse immediately and not slowly trickle away like manufacturing did, like the computer industry did (e.g. Lenova), like Services did (to India). Bit by bit trickle by trickle.
Look at gambling and the UK, UK locked down gambling to a few players, so internet gambling sites went offshore and still serve the UK. Did Camelot immediately disappear? Of course not, their returns aren't as good but its a slow and steady decay.
You are probably using a PC running Windows with Excel and Word and email and a network, but then you did the same in 1992. Look at where the new stuff comes from, Blackberry (hit by patent problems), Skype (European), Google (1998 new field not yet patent mined),...
"How can citizens of non-European nations help support the efforts to fight Software Patents there?"
Don't help stop them, encourage them! Because if the EU has software patents and your country doesn't, you can still make the software and sell it, but Europe can't. You can even sell it across the Internet to European companies and the EU can't stop you! It's one less competitor. The true innovative software developers will then move their operations to your country.
UK has restricted monopolies on lotteries & gambling, so internet gambling companies set up outside the UK and continue to sell to the UK. Software patents are the same thing.
It's worldwide protection, it's free, it's instant cover and if your internal inventions are truely inventive then nobody else will think of them. SAP can have its protection and still keep an open competitive market, there is no need to lock other European companies out of SAP's market to protect SAP's inventions.
On the other hand, if you are forced to patent before your competitor does, you reveal your secrets to every competitor in the world, even ones not excluded by your patent. They can then use your patent (and your competitors patents too) in their products in their markets to their advantage.
If SAP truely have inventions then they will benefit more from a software patent free Europe.
"Memorex buys Beijing 'Chung Brand' USB stick, performs QA on it, discards 20% due to deficiences and sells it labelled as made by Memorex (with 100% markup)"..."They give the assurance that their brand is worth."
Then why shouldn't the customer be able to honestly judge that 'added' value and decide whether it's worth paying for?:
"Memorex, Made in China" If Memorex is a positive brand and bigger than the negative effect of "made in china" and it still sells, then people believe Memorex QA makes up for the poor QA in China.
"Why should they be forced to disclosed the company they bought from? As long as its clearly labelled "Made in China"?"
The key is in the definition of "clearly labelled". I have a computer that says "Made in Czech Republic", but is almost certainly assembled in Czech republic and made in China-> weakness in labelling of origin of major parts of assembled goods. There's other weakenesses to, and I'd like to see the origin of goods strengthened as a result.
"Better country of origin laws would work if everyone was willing and able to pay more for goods made in *well paying* countries"
Price isn't everything. Do you pay more for a BMW than a Fiat? Fiat makes good cars sometimes, but they've also made bad ones and are devalued as a result. BMW compete at the premium end and avoid making bad cars. People do pay more and do by BMWs.
Slashdot Mirror
"Do you actually own any books?"
Yes, you bought it, tacked on terms are irrelevant. (IANAL)
"Seems to me the publishers already have told Google which books they don't want scanned"
* Yet that clause was put in those books prior to Google Book search existing, so it couldn't have been written with Google in mind.
* It fails the 'is this contract fair' test too, since the courts have repeatedly rules that you can reproduce portions of the books and it's fair use.
* The book publishers tolerate extracts in book reviews without complaint, and without attempting to enforce this clause, indicating acceptance of the worthlessness of this clause.
* Finally, some publishers are not complaining about Google Book Search, and their books have that clause, which suggests the first point is true (that that clause was not intended to block benefitial use).
So it's perfectly reasonable for Google to ask the publishers which books they don't want indexed by Google Book Search and a judge will find in their favour I reckon.
No, they were told. From what I read they ignored the complaint.
? NoticeID=1328
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi
"Sent via: fax
Re: Customer Support DMCA Complaints
We have discovered a massive misappropriation of Perfect 10 images and images belonging to third parties on websites that appear in Google indexed listings. This situation is very serious as consumers can view essentially the entirety of the Perfect 10 library over and over without paying anything by utilizing Google search. Consumers can also see thousands of high quality third party copyrighted images without charge, which makes the situation even more damaging for our company."
"Perfect 10's copyrighted works which have been infringed can be found in Perfect 10 Magazines and/or on its subscription website at www.Perfect10.com. If you wish to examine such copyrighted works, we can provide you with a temporary username/password with which you may do so. Specific volumes of Perfect 10 Magazine, issue number, and page number on which most of the copyrighted pictures can be found are set forth below."
There's missing a key point:
Perfect 10 blocked Google from indexing the site.
Third party copied the content and put it on their own site.
Google indexed that third parties site (not perfect 10's) compounding a existing copyright violation.
Whereas the book publishers can simply tell Google which books they don't want scanned and so they've given implicit permission by refusing to list those books.
Since fair use is a value judgement made by a judge interpreting a vague law, he sided with Perfect 10, but the same situation doesn't with the book publishers.
"It seems fundamentally unjust that a number of scientists could spend several years working on something but the one that finishes a few weeks earlier takes the entire reward."
Interesting point, yet isn't that the case with patents? Whoever gets in first kills everyone elses work. Not only that, the way a vague description is accepted for patents these days, the person getting the patent may just be a bullshitter with a vague description of something they haven't researched.
"Furthermore, the one that takes the reward in your system has guaranted security for life, so may as well immediately retire."
Just like Gates retired? Page?...
"When considering how many scientists actually change the world for the better, you can start by discounting the ones that work for military or security organisations..."
I don't see why you would do this, if you need a gun to defend yourself a gunmaker is a good guy.
Also having a reward like that doesn't preclude commercial success as an alternative. If tail-fins sell then thats a commercial success and the inventor of tail fins can still make money that way.
Overall, I side with GP on this.
From Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Manfred Broy Lehrstuhl für Software & Systems Engineering Institut für Informatik Technische Universität München:
"Producing a rigorous, complete, stand-alone specification for Microsoft work group server functionalities - or any software system of such enormous complexity - that is free of errors and omissions is beyond the state of the art and far beyond industrial practice"
So when an MS engineers dies, his secrets die with him? Nah.
So MS engineers are a breed apart and they understand this and nobody else? Nah, not plausible.
If they can pass the information internally they can pass it externally, they just don't want to.
I'd like to see it and judge for myself. Can someone give me a URL that I can just read it without agreeing any nasty EULAs or having to see their source code?
...explaining why they can't deliver 200 pages of documentation....
The problem with software patents is not copyright it's trade secrets. The source code is never released, so no database of prior art can cover any closed source software. The more innovative the algorithms, the more likely it will be strongly protected with tradesecrets and the less useful a prior art database would be.
Not only that, the source code isn't always a good description of an algorithm which is why every project I've ever worked on has lots of comments and documentation delivered with it.
So I don't see what the point of building a database of prior art actually achieves! How is it different from the GNU libraries? They're partial coverage of software available in sourcecode form too.
The point is, that Gonzales put his loyalty to the President above his duty to answer the legislative branch. When he talks to law students and the press he claims the President is acting legally when he bypasses the FISA, when he talks to Congress he simply refuses to answer the question.
This is the same thing, he's acting as a politician with an agenda rather than as a enforcer of the law. Google are right to refuse to be dragged into what is simply a political lobbying exercise.
If Gonzales can simply refuse to answer questions on the legality of domestic searches when he goes before Congress, then Google can refuse spurious warrants from Gonzales. The DOJ doesn't have a right to simply request any information for any reason, and its good that Google are fighting what seems to be a political thing rather than a law enforcement request.
Totally different from
1 52.html
http://forums.wdwmagic.com/archive/index.php?t-10
Disney Sues Over Teddy Bears
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- The Walt Disney Co. has sued a Swedish importer for copyright infringement and requested the destruction of 25,000 teddy bears it says are illegal replicas of Winnie the Pooh. The stuffed bears, which were made in China, were intercepted by Swedish customs in April and wear the "hunny" loving bear's trademark red shirt, according to a lawsuit filed with the district court in Malmoe, 340 miles southwest of the Swedish capital, Stockholm. They also have the same eyes, ears and nose and project "the same attitude and facial expression as Winnie the Pooh," the lawsuit said. Disney sued the importer, Malmoe-based Harle-quin Trade, to prevent the bears from being sold in Sweden, but the issue could be solved outside of court if the importer agreed to destroy the bears, attorney Ann-Charlotte Soederlund said. "Destroying teddy bears might seem a bit silly. But what if it's a pirate copy and it's dangerous and some child dies? Then Disney will be blamed," she said. Harlequin Trade president Hans Brefelt declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said his company had a "mutual understanding" with Disney. According to the lawsuit, Harlequin Trade reached a set-tlement with Disney earlier this year after trying to import alleged replicas of two other characters in the be-loved children's' stories created by British author A. A. Milne in the 1920s -- Piglet and Eeyore.
Slippery legal ground? They offer money to ISPs so it will be done by agreement, they only have to get one ISP in any area to sign up and that ISP will gain more customers who want to use the FON system.
Think about it, all other things being equal, if with one ISP you can use FON and with another not, and you can gain something from it (free roaming) then the ISP who accepts FON will get more customers, plus the revenue share FON are offering.
'Information security isn't secure when the algorithm's security depends on its secrecy"'
I think his point was that people will run images through this software and the software will say "fake" and users will believe it, even when it's wrong. The same problem is true whether closed or open source. They'll substitute the black box's definition of 'fake' for the real definition of fake because it's easier.
"A lot of "walk-ins" occur at embassies by people wanting to give information. Tapping the operator's phone and monitoring who calls would certainly be of use to counter-intelligence investigations."
Because it's such a long shot. Your assuming a person will defect from the monitoring country, that the spy will call just 1 Embassy (not any other government or USA consulate), that the defector will call ahead of time instead of just walking in, that you will learn enough to be useful and that (since Greece is an Allie!) he just won't walk into the police station or simply travel to any other schengen zone country. It's not plausible to me.
"Also, would only contract staff be able to work on those switches? Could anyone else have done it?"
I am assuming its an Ericsson switch engineer, which means it will typically be a contract staff or employee of Ericsson. The switch isn't on a public network, so the 'outside' hacker thing makes no sense. The switch doesn't know who has what telephone number, the billing system does that, and so how would they know which phone numbers to bug?
Switch engineers aren't usually local guys, Ericsson busses its own staff and rents them to telcos on big hourly rates.
So that means (by emlimination) a country with an extensive intelligence agency (Russia/USA/UK/FRANCE/ISRAEL), able to place someone in Vodaphone capable of being hired as a configuring Engineer for Ericsson switches (UK/USA), and spies on just 1 phone in US embassy (USA).
It does seem to look like CIA. I wouldn't be suprised if its the tip of the iceberg. Those switch engineers work all of the world, not just Greece, EMEA, Asia, even USA included.
There was 1 phone in the US embassy bugged too. 1? Why only 1? Why only the USA Embassy?
I reckon that's either to test it, or so it could be denied later ('well we were bugged too').
If it was Israel, China etc, I bet they'd bug all the western embassies - it would just be an extra line in a configuration file.
Plus I know a few Ericsson switch engineers and they are all US or UK contract staff which rules out China or Russia to me (but maybe that has changed, maybe Ericsson use Russian staff now?) and Turkey Cyprus or Albania, forget it! Where would they get switch engineers from?
I hate to jump to conclusions too, but it looks highly likely, especially given the domestic spying without warrant in the USA, and the UN Kofi Annan spying incident, and the claimed kidnapping of Greek citizens by US & UK agencies.
and they last as long as you don't reveal them.
_ eeeeeyooooo.html
http://www.nigeljohnstone.com/archives/2006/02/eu
"Over 2000 participants took part in the survey, and were asked what best described their view of the ORIGIN and development of life:"
Evolution doesn't explain the ORIGIN of life, so it was a faulty question. Nobody suggested the big bank is evolution...
... and not in the good way.
"Seriously, if Yahoo can maintain a profit at the #2 place, then there is no need to grow."
Until someone else comes along with new ideas and walks all over them. Thats what Google did to Altavista & Lycos, Altavista quit trying because it wasn't making big money and Google took their market away from them.
I talked (rather exchanged emails) this afternoon with Ricardo Baeza Yates, the man Yahoo hired to head their Spanish research arm and by the sound of it he's after the cream of any PhD's he can get, so I don't believe this woman when she says loser stuff like that. She's just spouting off.
"Everything else Google has done since then has fewer of those properties. "
I don't know about that, their 'Video' approach seems pretty good choices to me, depending on how it procedes. They could end up as 'the place' to go for a nights viewing if they play their hand right and thats big money worldwide.
"Then they could have stayed in their winning niche of "honest, non-obnoxious search"
You work in a bank right? a clerk? A quantity surveyor? I don't think its in the nature of people who set up businesses to play it safe and woudn't it be a boring world if they did? I just don't see what they have to lose, none of the things they've done require big capital investment except for the datacentres.
"No they can't, you own a patent on it. "
Patents only cover the places they're issued, and only the invention itself (so if you patent a better way to make chocolate, anyone outside your patent coverage can use your idea and sell you the resulting chocolate). So no.
"Those who want software patents will never agree to accept trade secrets instead, as they offer zero protection."
They are used extensively now, so it represents the status quo not a change.
You might like to read up on this one:
0 000779e2340.html
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/99610a50-7bb2-11da-ab8e-
EU implemented a database IP right to encourage production of databases, USA didn't. USA ended up with many more databases than EU. It didn't suddenly flip, we didn't wake up one morning and EU was far behind, it was a slow and steady change, more companies in the USA could enter the market, leading to more successes and slow competitive shift to the USA.
"Eight years after State Street, software innovation here in the U.S. is exuberant and growing, despite the doomsday predictions of naysayers. But I'm sure it's due to collapse any day now..."
Why would it collapse immediately and not slowly trickle away like manufacturing did, like the computer industry did (e.g. Lenova), like Services did (to India). Bit by bit trickle by trickle.
Look at gambling and the UK, UK locked down gambling to a few players, so internet gambling sites went offshore and still serve the UK. Did Camelot immediately disappear? Of course not, their returns aren't as good but its a slow and steady decay.
You are probably using a PC running Windows with Excel and Word and email and a network, but then you did the same in 1992. Look at where the new stuff comes from, Blackberry (hit by patent problems), Skype (European), Google (1998 new field not yet patent mined),...
"How can citizens of non-European nations help support the efforts to fight Software Patents there?"
Don't help stop them, encourage them! Because if the EU has software patents and your country doesn't, you can still make the software and sell it, but Europe can't. You can even sell it across the Internet to European companies and the EU can't stop you!
It's one less competitor. The true innovative software developers will then move their operations to your country.
UK has restricted monopolies on lotteries & gambling, so internet gambling companies set up outside the UK and continue to sell to the UK. Software patents are the same thing.
Trade secrets ARE the bridge position!
It's worldwide protection, it's free, it's instant cover and if your internal inventions are truely inventive then nobody else will think of them.
SAP can have its protection and still keep an open competitive market, there is no need to lock other European companies out of SAP's market to protect SAP's inventions.
On the other hand, if you are forced to patent before your competitor does, you reveal your secrets to every competitor in the world, even ones not excluded by your patent. They can then use your patent (and your competitors patents too) in their products in their markets to their advantage.
If SAP truely have inventions then they will benefit more from a software patent free Europe.
"Memorex buys Beijing 'Chung Brand' USB stick, performs QA on it, discards 20% due to deficiences and sells it labelled as made by Memorex (with 100% markup)" ..."They give the assurance that their brand is worth."
Then why shouldn't the customer be able to honestly judge that 'added' value and decide whether it's worth paying for?:
"Memorex, Made in China"
If Memorex is a positive brand and bigger than the negative effect of "made in china" and it still sells, then people believe Memorex QA makes up for the poor QA in China.
"Why should they be forced to disclosed the company they bought from? As long as its clearly labelled "Made in China"?"
The key is in the definition of "clearly labelled". I have a computer that says "Made in Czech Republic", but is almost certainly assembled in Czech republic and made in China-> weakness in labelling of origin of major parts of assembled goods. There's other weakenesses to, and I'd like to see the origin of goods strengthened as a result.
"Better country of origin laws would work if everyone was willing and able to pay more for goods made in *well paying* countries"
Price isn't everything.
Do you pay more for a BMW than a Fiat? Fiat makes good cars sometimes, but they've also made bad ones and are devalued as a result. BMW compete at the premium end and avoid making bad cars. People do pay more and do by BMWs.
Fiat = China
BMW = Italy France...