Groklaw is reporting that the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament has decided today to apply the article 55.1. of the Rules of Procedure and ask for a new first reading on the Computer-Implemented Inventions directive. The decision was reached with an overwhelming majority of the Committee, and with the support of all major political groups.
Software Patents back to Square One
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Eugenia Loli
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Hopefully there will be some positive progress this time.
Nick Blackledge has written a nice article covering the use of patents and the effect on the economy at:
http://www.xolinc.com/blog/index.php?id=34
Finally
Very very good news
Good luck for Starting new life .
I´m very happy right now. Thanks to all involved MEPs!!! I will for now ignore the fact that this probably is only a temporary victory.
How do we get it to go back to square 0?
I don’t want read about looming software patents in Europe every year for the next 10+ years.
The threat still looms which is all that is necessary for the shameless tactics of the patent-abuser’s to continue their fear-mongering.
I wonder if anyone has a patent on patent’s? 😉
Nice.
I wonder if William is enjoying his European vacation?
😉
😮 I thought he was in Brazil trying to stop the Federal goverment from replacing Windows with Linux on 300,000 of their machines.
Wow, Bill really gets around!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4471963
Those of us who live in the EU MUST keep the pressure on our Politicians. There is a chance that we can keep this out or at least restricted to only include inventions that have been developed using a computer (eg Pharmacuticals) and not the way that computer runs or simple phtases from the english language (Microsoft are you listening? Probably not)
BillyG’s little trip to Brussels this week was probably planned before this setback and was originally meant to triumph the passing of the law. Now his termites have to start all over again with their grand plan to get all software patented by Microsoft as befits their worship of the gospel according to the Prophets of Redmond. As Henry Ford found out, “Not every car should be painted black”.
I would have liked a law where software and gui patents only lasted for two years, then it was public domain.
It is not yet back to square one. JURI has decided to strongly suggest the commission to put it back to the start, but it is not a done deal yet.
Don’t forget about those who were activily involved in lobbying against software patents and polish goverment which stopped twice “moving forward” with this directive!
No one’s forgeting, don’t worry! Just keep up the good work over there, in Poland!
Hopefully, the Polish government won’t “give in” to those patent law seeking bastards.
Yes software patents could be a good thing to stimulate innovation, but only if they lasted for one year or two at most … err …. Well, I must admit I don’t know exactly how good it would be to allow exclusivity for one year or two.
I would have liked a law where software and gui patents only lasted for two years, then it was public domain.
That reveals the incredible “beauty” of how patents work in software. You can’t really get anything out of patenting something for that short time, possibly less than what you pay for protecting your patents with an army of lawyers for those two years.
You need a long period, say 5-10 years at least to make an impact with that to break even with your own expenses on patent protection.
It’s “beautiful”, because patents take an economic life of their own, creating expenses and maybe some income of you’re lucky and big enough. If you completely removed the lawyers and the patents and replaced their offices with computers and bright programmers, your benefits would probably be nearly the same, maybe even better.
The other way around, you could replace most of your programmers with lawyers and buy up a lot of patents and start pounding people right and left
You would be just as cold or as warm as the Emperor with or without his new clothes.
The later legislators attempt to pass it, the better: as open source is becoming more popular, many entities (governments) will become dependent on it, hopefully some day govts will get enough dependent to not let to pass any legislation which could harm FOSS. When your infrastructure works mainly on open source and does not cause many technical problems (virii, unpatched holes, crappy design, lack of flexibility etc.) or costs (forced upgrades, expensive support from foreign supplier etc.), you are free to alter it any way you want, all money spent on support come back into your region because supplier is a local firm etc. switching back to propiertary solutions seems to be a crazy idea without a good explanation.
I would be firmly opposed to patenting methods, techniques and practices that have been used worldwide for years before the patent application.
And then I’m still a great opponent of software patents.
NO patents on software.
And please don’t tell me this will stifle innovation, there’s a big laugh. The software industry has never needed patents to innovate. People have done that hacking code for decades now. No patent incentive required to stimulate software development. Just endless cups of joe, cans of jolt, the latest distro of the latest fad in Linux, Microsoft [easy on the sarcasm], Apple, BeOS, and just about anybody else with a CPU and a keyboard and access to a near-continuous supply of electricity.
Software patents are stupid.
I wonder if this time they will listen to the European Parliment when it makes amendments rather than simply removing them.
As you can read at http://money.cnn.com/2005/01/17/news/international/microsoft_brazil…, Microsoft Corp. was lobbying our government to agree to a meeting between Bill Gates and president Lula at Davos but Lula has choosen to talk to more interesting people 🙂
Let’s see . . . about 30 years ago I was working at Sperry Univac Airline Systems on developing airline reservation software. Basically it ended up being used by most of the airlines in the world because they hated IBM (much the way they hate Microsoft today), and we were an alternative to IBM.
I dabbled a bit with Linux in recent years. In many respects I consider Linux inferior to the operating systems we were using 30 years ago. Young people, especially Linux zealots, often assume they are the only ones capable of “innovation” and gladly give you a lecture on the subject:-) Its easier to perceive your work as original if you are completely ignorant about what went before.
Of the recent systems listed as innovative, the only one that impressed me was BeOS. The thing that impresses me about Linux is just that its open source; which I’ve slowly come to accept is a great alternative to have for an OS. What impresses me so much about Haiku is you have the BeOS innovation plus a better (IMO) MIT type of open source nature.
I’ve been hearing alarmist arguments on both sides of software patents for at least 30 years. Look how Sperry Univac got greedy with their GIF image format (actually I think their patent was just a oompression technique within GIF). They only ended up screwing themselves as PNG took off and became an alternative.
I don’t defend the “robber baron” greedy capitalists like Bill Gates. He will end up screwing himself by his own greed and because he doesn’t really offer the world much it wants to buy any more, and because the Linux alternative is out there. He’s already lost pricing leverage on key assets and the rest will surely follow.
Its a waste of your time and passion to figure out what Bill Gates wants and automtically be against it. In the blink of an eye what he wants won’t matter to anyone; it hasn’t mattered to me ever.
Also, with respect to recent innovations Silicon Valley has lost its stock options which makes a huge difference in trying to put a really gifted team together (like Be, Inc. did a decade or so ago). IMO we should not be complacent and assume because one innovative thing happened in recent years that everything is fine because I sense innovation has slowed dramatically and needs to be far far better than it is currently. To each his own, I don’t equate “hacking” necessarily with innovation. It might be, or it may just as easily be a form of self-delusion such as a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist or just a rehash of stuff that’s been out there forever but the “inventor” has been too lazy or cowardly to look honestly at what’s out there?
BTW its assinine to suggest 2 year time limit for patents; it takes the PTO that long to review and consider your application. If you’re smart enough to write a software program you’re certainly smart enough file your own patent application (called “applicant pro se”) without any lawyers. If your attitude didn’t suck so bad you would go to Barnes & Noble, buy the book and have at it. After you file you wait for about 2 years then get an incoherent response denying everyone of your claims. Then you respond (they just wanted to be sure you’re alive and serious) and then you finally get to deal with an actual Examiner. Once you get to that point you start to respect the U.S. Patent system and see how the little guy can use it with great effect.
If you’ve really got something that is (1) useful, and (2) non-obvious, and (3) original then I encourage you to stop sitting on your ass reading these ignorant sophmoric postings, including mine, and go out there and prove it. You do NOT have to be a U.S. citizen and many of the current patent holders were the classic entrepreneurial immigrant type of people who recognized great opportunity when it was staring them right in the face, and they acted on it.
Or you can hide your work, “protecting” it with software copyright only, or are you really protecting your fragile ego from cruel realities and rejection? I’m not suited to judge anyone. I will say when I see this much emotion and ignorance its usually motivated by some kind of deep personal fears. If you’re not willing to make a fool of yourself at least twice a day you’re not really my kind of sofware person:-)
“BTW its assinine to suggest 2 year time limit for patents; it takes the PTO that long to review and consider your application.”
So, um, start the two year period from when the patent is *approved*, not from when it is *applied for*?! Sheesh, is that so hard to figure out?
did i miss it, or did you not refute one of these “old, tired arguments”?
So im joe programmer, straight out of school, with a ton of really good ideas. i write a revolutionary app that noone has ever thought of before, no prior art exists, and i patent it. this is the best case scenario for a pro-patent argument, protecting the little guy from the big guys by giving him a temporary monopoly to build up his business based on his innovation.
now to continue our story, ibm sees the functionality, likes it alot, incorporates it into their products. joe is pissed (and rightly so), and goes to sue the pants off of ibm. ibm comes to pay joe a visit, and brings their (titanic) patent portfolio with them. ibm owns so many common sense programming techniques, that chances are there are dozens, if not hundreds that joe is violating. ibm then says they will cut him a deal, they will cross liscence with him, him giving them the right to his innovation, them giving him the right to use common programming techniques and algorithms.
THIS is the reality of software patents, and it happens on a semi regular basis. read an article awhile ago about how ibm went in and “shaked down” sun in its early days, for no other reason then that sun was a big competitor. how does that protect anyone?
Im a big fan of the american constitution, the more i read about it, the more im blown away by the level of intelligence and forsight of the founders of the states. however, things are very, very different now. patents and copyrights exist to provide a balance between individual innovation and market competition. that balance (and many others) have been thrown totally out of whack by the elimination of corporate restrictions. patents were created when corporations had a *very* limited mandate. corporations have changed, so the other laws should be changed to preserve the balance. if they arnt changed to preserve the balance, then they have no real reason to exist.
now lets get into the specifics of the topic at hand, software patents. if you look at the law, software is extremely close to art in the way it is handled, not property. imagine patenting common chord progressions, or certain color combinations and you will be much closer to what software patents are then comparing it to tools, inventions, or physical products. the only reason that patents havnt killed the software industry is that they are not used 99% of the time. go figure, the intended use is for protection of the small time inventor, and the main use has been in corporate warfare, or mafia style racketeering.
if we fast forward fifty years, assuming the trend in changes in law regarding intellectual property stays on the same course as the last thirty years or so, it will be impossible for a developer to actually develop by himself, for fear of outright theft by corporations. there is no way that the requirment of lawyers to create at even the most basic level stimulates innovation.
now the world of open source is pretty much the exact opposit of corporate development. you noted in your post that innovation isnt really the strong point of linux, but what you failed to mention is that linux is moving at the speed of light compared to its competition. it boggles my mind to think back to even a year ago, and the state of the world of open source at that time. i would say things are moving at least twice as fast there, as compared to the world of corporate development. i would say this can be linked to nothing else other then the enforced sharing of information. another example would be universities, where most innovation in the corporate world is taken from.
anyways, sorry for the length of the post, it sorta turned into a manifesto on the evils of software patents. but i would love for you to tell me where and how i am wrong, as you seem like an intelligent man (which tends to be an anomoly on osnews)
to talk to our politicians, especially those of us that have a software company and a few emploees whoos jobs would move to Asia if software patents became a reality.
From what I know, patents were originally meant to prevent new ideas getting lost. Some inventors would be so scared that a competitor would take their idea and have success with it, that they’d sit on it, die, and take the invention into the grave. With the result that society lost the benefit of that invention. Patents were meant to ease that, and to stimulate invention, for the benefit of society, not companies/inventors.
I think right now you’d have a good case to do away with patents entirely, and just say to inventors: “you have an idea, and don’t want to tell anyone? Go ahead, keep it to yourself until you die if you wish”. Why? 200 years ago, there may have been few people smart or lucky enough to come up with really new ideas, and a society badly in need of technical advancement. But today things are really different. In this high tech world, new ideas can be turned into products in no-time, and lots of new technology enters the marketplace daily. If anyone would take an idea into the grave, it’s very likely that it gets re-invented elsewhere soon. Not? Then it wasn’t so important anyway, and society can do without. 6,000,000,000+ people that are generally better educated and equipped than 200 years ago, makes this a strong case. If the net effect of patents were sort of neutral, it would still be better to do away with them, since that cuts the overhead of the patent system itself. Objectively speaking, there’s only a place for patents when it is proven that they have a net benefit for society. The same goes for copyrights BTW (don’t mix them up though, patents and copyrights are totally different animals).
Probably won’t work, knowing how corporate-controlled politics are these days. Good outcome for the EU in this case? Don’t think so: a stupid proposal, massive corporate lobbying and public protests, endless back-and-forth between parliaments and ministers, and the result: back to square one, not even a final yes or no. The process was very undemocratic, and only resulted in wasting truckloads of taxpayers’ money. And undecided -> more waste to come. Positive result of EU politics? No, typical example of how bad the EU works in its current form.
All this doesn’t make me happy anyway. Interested to see how things go when the public (in some EU member countries) gets to vote on the new EU constitution. Haven’t decided yet what is worse: Vote “yes”, and let EU politicians look good with a new constitution that’s really not good enough, or vote “no”, and steer towards a political crisis. In that case, it could be ages before a better constitution is produced, and the old crappy ways would be used in the meanwhile. Choices, choices…
Sounds like the EU is a great headless chicken who can’t make up their bloody minds. It needs drastic restructuring or it will go the way of the Dodo (extinct).
New moto for them, we can agree to disagree.