It is not that funny. A microsoft representative Mr Belz recently said in Germany (Stuttgart Landtag, lots of MEPs) the directive was not about software, so the contradiction was why Microsoft needed such patents.
CII makes you believe it was something different than software. this is why the EPO invented the term.
In fact not the minister, the national bureaucrats from the legal department wwho are also in the borard of the EPO as representatives. The patent system creates its own laws and politicians are told what to do. Plus some cheering of the lobby.
You do not need to be eurosceptic. You just have to ask for a simple rule of Government: Seperation of powers. National parliaments and the European Parliament have little say in this. Euroscepticism often leads to strengthening of the national representations in the EU such as the Council of ministers, where administration takes over the role of the lawmaker.
No, this Financial Times article is not credible. The source of the author is EICTA which sets a certain spin. EICTA and others tell everybody CII was all about ABS brakes and insuline devices.
The teaching of "controllable forces of nature" is a common definition of "technical" in the meaning of patent law, there are no real alternatives. It is a widely accepted definition, nothing which was "invented" by Michel Rocard. Further the article creates the impression Rocard was a lonely fighter but in fact many other groups in the legal affairs committee put forward similar proposals. He is the official rapporteur, the person in charge for the legal affairs Committee, so he published his report first. There is common ground in Parliament to get rid off software patents, but the debate is obfuscated. E.g. the Council proposals says "Software as such" was unpatentable. You need much legal expertise to understand why it in fact codifies the opposite of which what you might believe. The phrase in fact de facto deletes the 52.2 EPC. "Software as such" acording to the Council proposal is something similar to Code which is not executed on a computer. Nobody wants additional protection of copyrighted code by patent protection. A software patent is the very same as a patent on a "computer-implemented invention", and may not be mixed up with a patent on a "computer-assisted invention", a technical invention which is patentable under the EPC. EICTA incorrectly says that the first reading result would make abs brakes and other inventions unpatentable.
In fact you can read the examination guidelines of the EPO how it is done. Some scholars complain about it and the European Parliament has to correct the mess now.
We recently saw MS's ACT lobbying in Brussels for Software patents. Real amateurs. I think MS lobbying for software patents just mirrors the common conspiracy theory.
I am looking forward to a real discussion with MS. But the problem is: talking to lobbyists is like talking to the press speaker. I want to speak to persons who are responsible, no lobbying clowns.
Regardless what Apple does, we will see Apple users praising features that other operationg systems had implemented for a long time. The Steve Jobs effect, marketing, a product designer + apple community, and a crappy music player without a colour display will be cool....
It's all about rationalising decision, and what silly arguments you will find: - Mac OS X was a Unix and based on open source technology - Mac OS X had good usability - Power PC processors are better - Having a restricted set of devices you can use with Macs is great and we like to pay more for the same technology. - outer appearance of hardware matters - Intel user are too common people
Well, I would not object Softpear but Apple Mac OS X, you know, I just do not like the community. I do not want to belong to the exclusive club.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/21_07 _04cg00086.en04.pdf
Just one simple example:
Article III-125 (ex Article 35 TEC)
To enable the objectives set out in Article III-123 to be attained, provision may be made within the
framework of the common agricultural policy for measures such as:
(b) joint measures to promote consumption of certain products.
From a ordoliberal view it is not a constitutional objective to tell the consumer what he or she has to consume.
The EU constitution DRAFT is a piece of crap and a real danger to democracy. It even specifies the goals of state policy as in cuba and regulates what European Parties have to stand for. Most European politicians support it because it provides an improvement of the state of the Union. However this draft is not meant for eternity and I reject it as there are so many flaws. In the European Union currently a "Safer Internet" program is run by DG InfoSoc. In Italy politicians put forward a "self-regulatory" framework as a hosted in the national administration with a government majority.
four members representing the Adherents designated by the Associations that have signed the current Code;
- two members, one of whom will act as President and represent the Ministry of Communications, and two representing the Presidency of the Council of the Ministers, and specifically the Department for Innovation and Technology;
- three members designated by Associations for the safeguarding of minors and by the National Council for Users.
These will be chosen from the participants in the working-group Internet@minori, which has been set up at the Ministry of Communications.
The Ministry of Communications provides the Secretariat to support the activities of the Committee.
Italian Parliament is not in charge, it is a private law agreement between Italy and the Internet providers and enforced via private law.
But it depends on the Gnome desktop and its evangelists are known to be vapour ware freaks with strong propaganda against other frameworks. I think we shall rather focus on GNU Classpath and get it done first before talking about mono.
Sorry, but the US in fact is a agrar export nation. Japan is still not recovered.
The US are a big single market, that is all.
And the EU? The EU is a collection of single states. And what about software development in the EU.
Current advantage EU
- about 1,5 year beyond in Free Software application (e.g. Apache Webserver in Germany about 92%)
- innovative SME driven market
- good networks
- less legal transaction costs
weakness sw EU
- little backing of sw industry from the governments
- marketing
- little agenda setting
- language barrier
What about such amazing things like the Irrlicht engine? I believe that the PC 3d engine market will go down the open source road. This does not mean Linux yet but it will make it possible to run these games on Linux as well.
And many mods for existing engines are just something like hobby work. So there is an intresting future.
As far as I know AOL owned Netscape and funded Mozilla development. Then MS paid them large amounts of money that they continue to support their IE Engine. It was a multimillion deal. A real payoff for open source investment that secures independence. As some economists told us monopolies are not that bad as long as there is the option of antoher player to enter the market and take it over. It is really funny to see MS paying for IE usage.
Still I may not use Visual Foxpro with WIne thanks to MS EULA. And of course competition law is always weak. After 4 years of examination they order somthing which is then further delayed in court.
See the EU agreement in whcih MS is forced to license a Windows without media player. They provide it to the same price....
In fact there is also a US-list of FFII which is not much frquented.
us-parl@ffii.org
subscribe here: http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl
"As long as US politicians are bought and paid for by the big corporations there is no other way that this issue will come up for discussion in either the House or the Senate."
We do not share this view in Europe. Maybe it is different here, maybe our lobbying is better. Anyway it is useful to give lobbying a try. If it works for the corporations it will work for us as well.
Please note that the US shift towards software patents was without democratic approval and you can bet that business interests were not at stake except those from the patent community.
"We already have patents for computer-implemented inventions in the UK."
True, but what does that mean. http://gauss.ffii.org
"20% of patents are for the above."
about 30 000, most of them owned by Us and JP companies.
"Here's a few sentences on open source, even though your letter doesn't mention it. That's because we're sending you a boilerplate letter. The UK supports the EU Directive on software patents."
"We think UK innovators and users, especially small firms want software patents."
I "think" there is no evidence that sme want swpat. The SME represenatives in Brussels are strictly against. I think there are no business interests at all exept the patent professionals. UK traditionally leaves it to the patent system to define its rules. A serious mistake.
"There's no evidence that software patents will harm the industry. Not even in America."
In fact they have to provide evidence that it will do good, but: Of course there is no economic study in favour of software patenting. I also recommend you to read the FTC report.
"The EU Directive will only clarify the current law, not change it."
It will codify the legal escape from the EPO.
"UK Government did a consultation exercise in autumn 2000, which concluded that the status quo of having software patents is the best position."
Where and who? We know a lot of fake interviews from the patent busines. The kind: "Are patents important for your business?"
"I'd never heard of this consultation. DTI is about the private sector. Nowhere in the letter does it reference my concern: the public sector."
The fact is that denic does a pretty good job without much overhead. That's why there are so many de domains.
I believe that a Co-op is the right organisational framework.
Don't get the UN or Verisign involved. The UN is a diplomat's talkshop with a lot of overhead. Esp. those Internet Governance people shall get wiped out. They make a lot of fuzz in the lobby of ICANN an they know that they had real success at the ITU (=UN)
1. Novelty: You assume that novelty matters or novelty constitutes a right. But look at many areas where novelty or beeing the first does not matter.
Try to find out why you regard novelty as important.
Silly examples e.g. "I was the first who sold sausages together with novels. My business plan. I went bankrupt. Now someone "stole" my idea and does the same. I bear the costs of the invention."
In the Software business you usually are infringing on a patent you never read. Your own independend work is by no means influenced by the patent. Good inventions are "unique" inventions that will not get invented by others. In a patent race however not the best researcher but the smartest patent writer wins. In the software field those persons who filed for the patents are totally unknown in the market place. They were the first to file. Americans usually stress the principle of prior art whcih plays an important role in their special "first to invent" system. However only another patent application constitute good proven prior art. You ask yourself, oh, what is new here? Patent bureaucrats will explain it. Usually software "inventors" "invent" known processes. Others, software authors write code and do not waste their time with this horrible bureaucratic overhead that has so much dangerous effects on freedom of competition and the market place.
2. Inventions: Is there such a thing as a software invention. According to the European Patent Convention software cannnot constitute an invention.
A philosophical argument: "mathematics" "patenting thoughts" etc. is always very weak in politics. Your opponents will depict you as someone with a rather religious belief that Code shall be patented. So it stands "business" against ethics. Guess who wins? The bogus business interests, i.e. the patent attorney association.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 will make it even more difficult for them. I currently use the development versions and I must tell you, they are a giant leap. The advantage of MS-Office melts away. Governments now know that they have to consider using OpenOffice to get discounts for MS-Office. But soon OpenOffice will be a superiour choice.
MS responds here, it does not set the agenda, it does not embrace it reacts to a policy drift out of their control.
I really wonder why emulators such as dosbox and Zdnes are not better integrated in your desktop environment. I mean KcontrolCenter configuration modules, I mean a "just run" environment, where the whole emulator is nidden as a background process.
The main advantage of gaming consoles is that you just insert the disk7cardrige and start to play.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not that funny. A microsoft representative Mr Belz recently said in Germany (Stuttgart Landtag, lots of MEPs) the directive was not about software, so the contradiction was why Microsoft needed such patents.
e fault.aspx
CII makes you believe it was something different than software. this is why the EPO invented the term.
http://www.softwarechoice.org/software_comp/cii_d
In fact not the minister, the national bureaucrats from the legal department wwho are also in the borard of the EPO as representatives. The patent system creates its own laws and politicians are told what to do. Plus some cheering of the lobby.
You do not need to be eurosceptic. You just have to ask for a simple rule of Government: Seperation of powers. National parliaments and the European Parliament have little say in this. Euroscepticism often leads to strengthening of the national
representations in the EU such as the Council of ministers, where administration takes over the role of the lawmaker.
Btw: http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/ie-parl
> Just search for pro patent websites, you have to be an idiot to accept their rediculous claims and far-flung reasoning.
e fault.aspx
http://www.patents4innovation.org/
http://www.campaignforcreativity.org/
Two very good astroturfing sites pro software patents. And Microsoft's Softwarechoice
http://www.softwarechoice.org/software_comp/cii_d
No, this Financial Times article is not credible. The source of the author is EICTA which sets a certain spin. EICTA and others tell everybody CII was all about ABS brakes and insuline devices.
The teaching of "controllable forces of nature" is a common definition of "technical" in the meaning of patent law, there are no real alternatives. It is a widely accepted definition, nothing which was "invented" by Michel Rocard. Further the article creates the impression Rocard was a lonely fighter but in fact many other groups in the legal affairs committee put forward similar proposals. He is the official rapporteur, the person in charge for the legal affairs Committee, so he published his report first. There is common ground in Parliament to get rid off software patents, but the debate is obfuscated. E.g. the Council proposals says "Software as such" was unpatentable. You need much legal expertise to understand why it in fact codifies the opposite of which what you might believe. The phrase in fact de facto deletes the 52.2 EPC. "Software as such" acording to the Council proposal is something similar to Code which is not executed on a computer. Nobody wants additional protection of copyrighted code by patent protection. A software patent is the very same as a patent on a "computer-implemented invention", and may not be mixed up with a patent on a "computer-assisted invention", a technical invention which is patentable under the EPC. EICTA incorrectly says that the first reading result would make abs brakes and other inventions unpatentable.
In fact you can read the examination guidelines of the EPO how it is done. Some scholars complain about it and the European Parliament has to correct the mess now.
Currently the EPO even takes part in many Microsoft Softwarechoice/compTIA lobbying events. The EPO is no EU body but totally independent. It will be difficult to get the system back under legislative control but the European Parliament will try. Now the Committee on Legal Affairs works on the directive.
What kind of support can YOU provide?
* US citizens may get subscribed in the us-parl mailing list. software patents are an international problem, so we have to get rid off them internationally.
* EU citizens can have a look at this list
* EU citizens shall make an appointment with their MEP
* Donate to the FFII
* Register as a supporter via aktiv.ffii.org, members unlike supporters additionally pay membership fees.
If so: Why not support http://www.economic-majority.com/ with your company?
We recently saw MS's ACT lobbying in Brussels for Software patents. Real amateurs. I think MS lobbying for software patents just mirrors the common conspiracy theory.
I am looking forward to a real discussion with MS. But the problem is: talking to lobbyists is like talking to the press speaker. I want to speak to persons who are responsible, no lobbying clowns.
Regardless what Apple does, we will see Apple users praising features that other operationg systems
had implemented for a long time. The Steve Jobs effect, marketing, a product designer + apple community, and a crappy music player without a colour display will be cool....
It's all about rationalising decision, and what silly arguments you will find:
- Mac OS X was a Unix and based on open source technology
- Mac OS X had good usability
- Power PC processors are better
- Having a restricted set of devices you can use with Macs is great and we like to pay more for the same technology.
- outer appearance of hardware matters
- Intel user are too common people
Well, I would not object Softpear but Apple Mac OS X, you know, I just do not like the community. I do not want to belong to the exclusive club.
The real problem is the wrong category: "Patent pending", but it is not about patents as far as I can see.
In Europe SMEs drive Linux development and use. Events and fairs such as LinuxTag show a SME profile of the Linux user business community.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/21_07 _04cg00086.en04.pdf
Just one simple example:
Article III-125 (ex Article 35 TEC)
To enable the objectives set out in Article III-123 to be attained, provision may be made within the
framework of the common agricultural policy for measures such as:
(b) joint measures to promote consumption of certain products.
From a ordoliberal view it is not a constitutional objective to tell the consumer what he or she has to consume.
See: http://www.eifonline.org/site_16/fil/fil_35.doc
Italian Parliament is not in charge, it is a private law agreement between Italy and the Internet providers and enforced via private law.
But it depends on the Gnome desktop and its evangelists are known to be vapour ware freaks with strong propaganda against other frameworks. I think we shall rather focus on GNU Classpath and get it done first before talking about mono.
Sorry, but the US in fact is a agrar export nation. Japan is still not recovered. The US are a big single market, that is all. And the EU? The EU is a collection of single states. And what about software development in the EU. Current advantage EU - about 1,5 year beyond in Free Software application (e.g. Apache Webserver in Germany about 92%) - innovative SME driven market - good networks - less legal transaction costs weakness sw EU - little backing of sw industry from the governments - marketing - little agenda setting - language barrier
What about such amazing things like the Irrlicht engine? I believe that the PC 3d engine market will go down the open source road. This does not mean Linux yet but it will make it possible to run these games on Linux as well.
And many mods for existing engines are just something like hobby work. So there is an intresting future.
As far as I know AOL owned Netscape and funded Mozilla development. Then MS paid them large amounts of money that they continue to support their IE Engine. It was a multimillion deal. A real payoff for open source investment that secures independence. As some economists told us monopolies are not that bad as long as there is the option of antoher player to enter the market and take it over. It is really funny to see MS paying for IE usage.
They can do that because they are covered by patents. I do not think that MS gives a positive permission to use these formats.
Still I may not use Visual Foxpro with WIne thanks to MS EULA. And of course competition law is always weak. After 4 years of examination they order somthing which is then further delayed in court.
See the EU agreement in whcih MS is forced to license a Windows without media player. They provide it to the same price....
MS is a anti-competitive company.
In fact there is also a US-list of FFII which is not much frquented. us-parl@ffii.org subscribe here: http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl "As long as US politicians are bought and paid for by the big corporations there is no other way that this issue will come up for discussion in either the House or the Senate." We do not share this view in Europe. Maybe it is different here, maybe our lobbying is better. Anyway it is useful to give lobbying a try. If it works for the corporations it will work for us as well. Please note that the US shift towards software patents was without democratic approval and you can bet that business interests were not at stake except those from the patent community.
"We already have patents for computer-implemented inventions in the UK."
True, but what does that mean.
http://gauss.ffii.org
"20% of patents are for the above."
about 30 000, most of them owned by Us and JP companies.
"Here's a few sentences on open source, even though your letter doesn't mention it. That's because we're sending you a boilerplate letter. The UK supports the EU Directive on software patents."
"We think UK innovators and users, especially small firms want software patents."
I "think" there is no evidence that sme want swpat. The SME represenatives in Brussels are strictly against. I think there are no business interests at all exept the patent professionals. UK traditionally leaves it to the patent system to define its rules. A serious mistake.
"There's no evidence that software patents will harm the industry. Not even in America."
In fact they have to provide evidence that it will do good, but: Of course there is no economic study in favour of software patenting. I also recommend you to read the FTC report.
"The EU Directive will only clarify the current law, not change it."
It will codify the legal escape from the EPO.
"UK Government did a consultation exercise in autumn 2000, which concluded that the status quo of having software patents is the best position."
Where and who? We know a lot of fake interviews from the patent busines. The kind: "Are patents important for your business?"
"I'd never heard of this consultation. DTI is about the private sector. Nowhere in the letter does it reference my concern: the public sector."
It does harm to the private sector as well.
The fact is that denic does a pretty good job without much overhead. That's why there are so many de domains.
I believe that a Co-op is the right organisational framework.
Don't get the UN or Verisign involved. The UN is a diplomat's talkshop with a lot of overhead. Esp. those Internet Governance people shall get wiped out. They make a lot of fuzz in the lobby of ICANN an they know that they had real success at the ITU (=UN)
Two important points to add:
1. Novelty: You assume that novelty matters or novelty constitutes a right. But look at many areas where novelty or beeing the first does not matter.
Try to find out why you regard novelty as important.
Silly examples e.g.
"I was the first who sold sausages together with novels. My business plan. I went bankrupt. Now someone "stole" my idea and does the same. I bear the costs of the invention."
In the Software business you usually are infringing on a patent you never read. Your own independend work is by no means influenced by the patent. Good inventions are "unique" inventions that will not get invented by others. In a patent race however not the best researcher but the smartest patent writer wins.
In the software field those persons who filed for the patents are totally unknown in the market place. They were the first to file. Americans usually stress the principle of prior art whcih plays an important role in their special "first to invent" system. However only another patent application constitute good proven prior art. You ask yourself, oh, what is new here? Patent bureaucrats will explain it. Usually software "inventors" "invent" known processes. Others, software authors write code and do not waste their time with this horrible bureaucratic overhead that has so much dangerous effects on freedom of competition and the market place.
2. Inventions: Is there such a thing as a software invention. According to the European Patent Convention software cannnot constitute an invention.
A philosophical argument: "mathematics" "patenting thoughts" etc. is always very weak in politics. Your opponents will depict you as someone with a rather religious belief that Code shall be patented. So it stands "business" against ethics. Guess who wins? The bogus business interests, i.e. the patent attorney association.
The problem for Microsoft is the domino effect.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 will make it even more difficult for them. I currently use the development versions and I must tell you, they are a giant leap. The advantage of MS-Office melts away. Governments now know that they have to consider using OpenOffice to get discounts for MS-Office. But soon OpenOffice will be a superiour choice.
MS responds here, it does not set the agenda, it does not embrace it reacts to a policy drift out of their control.
I really wonder why emulators such as dosbox and Zdnes are not better integrated in your desktop environment. I mean KcontrolCenter configuration modules, I mean a "just run" environment, where the whole emulator is nidden as a background process. The main advantage of gaming consoles is that you just insert the disk7cardrige and start to play.
Well, then use Lojban. See http://www.lojban.org A logical language.