Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Patents

EU Board Votes To Allow Software Patents 143

Posted by Hemos from the bad-times-in-bentime dept.
scamp was one of the folks who wrote from Europe with the news that an administrative board for the European Patents Office has voted 10-9 to allow patents for software in Europe. There's still a final conference to be held in Novemeber to ratify the decision - so there's still time to sign the petition against it. The conference in November should be close - the multinationals, US and Japan are applying heavy pressure. BTW, if you can't read German, use the fish.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

EU Board Votes To Allow Software Patents More

EU Board Votes To Allow Software Patents

Comments Filter:
  • Firstly, I don't think these guys program.

    Secondly, I don't think these guys are online often enough, because they forgot to divide the duration time for software patents by 10.

    Thirdly, in a world where monopolies are supposed to be BAD, monopolies over information is still allowed.

    Now, no protection is also BAD. But the current patent system is destructive. We are no longer all farmers!

    What should we do? Any suggestions?


  • Amazon's patent is *stupid* as in it is obvious.

    At least the title "one-click shopping" is. In reality, I assume the content of the patent is more specific and it doesn't apply to all shopping carts.

    It is also a combination of technologies... cookies, databases, etc. Sure they have a formula, but that is what they have. Not a monopoly on everything that is "one-click". And the technologies they use are not theirs.

    Programming is very systematic. And answers are better off shared, because they always lead to the next thing. And you usually are already using shared code. Once you have specific pieces of code patented, every programmer suffers because they ahve to work around them. And yes, it is almost always possible to work around them. Just a pain in the asss.

    What if certain tags in HTML were patented? What if cookies had royalties?

    It usually isn't the programmer who goes to the patent office... it's the guy who hired him/her.

  • I certainly hope so, but you have to try and pull the right strings to make this something more than just a geek thing that doesn't wake people up. To influence the decision makers (read: politicians) it is not enough to publish something in the web. These people think that a topic is important if they can read it in the major newspapers. And it's not the poor little IT professionals they care about. It's economy and national competence, the future success of a country and its businesses (or that's what they should be interested in, to benefit voters).

    I approached a major Finnish newspaper (Finns consider it an institution, if you would say) with the suggestion that they should write an article in a way that laymen understand for the following reasons:

    -These patents threaten the success of small Finnish IT companies, who have to hire an army of lawyers, or perish. Besides, Finnish is not going to be one of the languages that can be used in the patent filing.
    -Many methods have already been patented in USA and Japan and it is logical that the protection for these would easily be expanded to cover Europe. European companies are worse off.
    -The public sector is currently actively trying to find ways to develop and make public services available over the internet, or utilizing telecommunications and computers (education, care of the elderly, etc.). Patents can prevent the use of these methods even for non-profit government activities.

    The issue is not a new one. However, there are great economic values at stake yet so few people are aware of these and can portray the consequences of bad decisions! It should be interesting for small investors (not professionals, but common folks) that the share price of those highly popular IT companies (reflecting expectations) could be seriously affected by this. Therefore this is certainly worth an article.

    Let's keep the thumbs up that these concerns get mainstream media coverage!
  • ... Should instead increase exponentualy. So you get Price^number of patents already granted by the applicant. That way huge ass corporations can't keep a large cache of stupid patents and individual persons can still patent geniune inventions for a nonimal fee.

    Grammar, grammer, spelling, to bad this is slashdot and not english, eh?
  • Software patents are not neccessarily evil. They're actually a good thing. The discussion I've seen so far unfortunately misses the point. Why? Because a patent has two functions.

    a) It ensures that the money invested in a commercial development (invention) can be earned back from the work before others just copy and paste. That by itself is fair and forms an incentive for inventing things.

    It is important to keep in mind that this only applies for commercial activities. As long as you're not commercial, you don't have to care. Unfortunately, courts seem to regard everything as commercial. That's a problem.

    The other problem is, that funny things are considered to be inventions. An invention by definition is something substantially new. Unfortunately, patent offices seem to consider things to be substantially new, that are more of a joke (click a single button instead of two to order the book). You wouldn't be able to do a PhD with that so why should that make a patent?

    b) The second purpose of patents is to make them public. This is the point always missed. If you want to patent something, you will have to publicize it. That's the deal. The idea was, that others can learn from that and maybe develop something based on that.

    This is actually what the whole open source community is demanding all the time: opening the source. So patenting e.g. Windows should mean, opening the source. You can't compile your own windows then (because the patent protects it), but you can see how MS has done it and finally write the nice software that really integrates. You even would be able to see, what backdoors are in there and how good security really is.

    In order to not block markets and developments forever, patents expire. The time is quite long because when the laws where set up, most inventions were of mechanical nature, complicated machines and you needed many years to get your investment back. Not so with software! Since software is trivial to duplicate, the money for the investment comes back in much shorter time.

    The logical consequence of all this is to allow patents for software, but adjust their expiry date. So make it running for a year and then the stuff becomes public domain. If a company doesn't like that, it can't patent. By adjusting the protected period to nowaday's needs, everyone is treated fairly. And then there is nothing evil in a patent.

    Just my humble opinion,
    patrick!

  • So, once you've done all that work writing the code, do you want to get sued for patent infringement?

    *That* is what software patents are about. Patenting things that a lot of people are bound to implement and 'invent' independent of the patent holder, not even knowing someone has done it before

    No. When you want to get a patent for anything, you have to provide evidence to the comittee that your idea/thing is compliant to the rules the comittee has setup. For example, an obvious idea that can come up in every skilled person's head during his work will never be granted a patent. When you want a 20 year patent, you have to prove with examples and materials that your idea is indeed unique and worth the 20 year patent. This is NOT easy (as in: easy to convice the patentcomittee). So don't worry someone patents a forloop that searches a single linked list :). It's more about patents on CLEVER IMPLEMENTATIONS of algoritms that for example do real time LOD on meshes for example, stuff that is now patented using not the sourcecode but ideadescriptions.

    Software patents are about clever implementations of an algoritm, not the algoritm itself. That is already patentable. Because, as I said, the rules are strict, it's hard to proof that your 'clever' implementation is unique. A good example of a clever implementation is Dijkstra's semaphoreless concurrency program.
    --

  • It actually is logical to allow patents on hardware and not software. Generally, taking hardware to market takes much longer and costs much more money, hence protection of the initial investment is more important

    That said, I think software patents are still a good thing, although not in their current incarnation. I think patent offices should recognize the differences between hardware and software, and allow patents of software and mathematical algorithms for much shorter periods of time.

    I also agree that dumb patents don't deserve to live. However, instead of making us challenge all of them individually, shortening the time period to maybe three or five years would make the problem disappear quickly enough that in many cases it would not be worth the bother, either to fight the patent, or even obtain it in the first place.

  • Bollocks. I've written an enormous amount of code, and most of it remains locked up, unused and unavailable. I wrote a database system that could re-format tables on the fly about five years before anyone else could (AFAIIA, I am drunk at the moment though). Bloody company went under due to excessive Porsche consumption, and my code dissappeared with it. Now no-one gets the benefit, but some muppet gets to claim they did it first, and that somehow makes them special, and entitled to monopoly profits? Fuck that shit. Most coding 'innovations' are obvious given enough thought, not that a fucking patent clerk could ever recognise that. Like any half decent coder aims to become a patent clerk.

    I DEMAND TO BE JUDGED BY MY PEERS! Fuck the rest of you...

    ...now where's that vodka gone?
  • take Thoreau's advice to "Do what thou wilst will be the whole of the law"

    You're quoting Crowley here, not Thoreau...

    --
  • Amen! Slashdot seems to have forgotten that some IP is good, and that this entire software industry that (dare I say it? I will...) OSS has leached from, was based on IP.

    What worries me is that them kids around here are neglecting that the software industry was built around very proprietary and very profitable platforms. OSS is a great engineering practice (and I support it wholeheartedly) but its not a panacea and it's not orthogonal to making a profit off your code or IPing it.

    Most importantatly them kids forget that OSS (or FS or whatever) is *dependent* on copyright law to impose their licenses, not least of which restrictive ones like the GPL.

    I wish we could both voice this opinion without facing the /. jihad. Here it comes...
  • Hey, you stole my subject line.

    They slashdotted the fish! Those bastards!

    --

  • The nerve! allowing people to patent intellectual work! What is wrong with them, fancy-food-eating, foreign-language-speaking Europeans? Copyright!? on software!? unbelievable!

    Next thing we'll know, some long-haired freak will come up with some viral license that will restrict people's rights to their code so as to keep it open! thank God we're gonna file that petition so that hare-brained schemes like that are gonna fail and everybody will be able to do whatever they want!

    ...

    Don't people think around here before launching into tirades against patents and laws? don't they realize not all regulation is bad? has Atlas Shrugged too much or are you just making too much money for your age?
  • Don't waste your time. Instead, take advantage of the situation, go file a patent application.

    Yeah, right, yankee boy. Something like your own 0.5-click-shopping, no?
  • Something I really don't get in the actual logic of software patents.

    I though ideas where non patentable !

    Take for instance the 1-Click patent, if someone comes with a different implementation of the 1-Clik scheme, he is still considered as violating the patent ? so in fact he is violating the idea of 1-Click for shopping not it's application!?

    Where is the logic? And why this can't be brought to a court?

  • ...Despite the fact that a good number of the companies pushing for this probably have American branches and/or parent companies...


    -RickHunter
  • Actually, in proper French, it would be "Dumais". It doesn't take a French speaking person to figure this out. Most other countries, French speaking or not, realize this. It seems to only be the Americans that manage to mess it up.

  • "Did Einstein patent 'The Theory of Relativity', or 'Special Relativity'"

    Umm, Einstein didn't patent The Theory of Relativity because pure IDEAS ARE NOT PATENTABLE.

    The implementation of an idea IS patentable. So you can't patent the Theory of Reletivity, but you could patent a time machine based on it. (or something.)

    When it comes to software, the line between the implementation and the idea is very fuzzy. I can't help you more than that.

  • >>Is the light bulb really THAT different from a fire? Duh! Yes, it is. And equally different is a paint program from a canvas and paint. Some guy came up with the light bulb and he deserves a patent. Let's not let things get out of hand. The one-click patent is stupid. The light bulb is not. One is a ripoff, the other is a tremendous historic milestone. I want some guy who has written some great software to get a patent. What is important is how the patent office decides what gets a patent and what doesnt. They have do be educated. New great software should be 'patentable'.

  • Re:WHY (Score:1)

    by azzy ( 86427 )
    Yeah, right, yankee boy. Something like your own 0.5-click-shopping, no?

    Perhaps not as silly as it sounds... just link the 'buying' action to an 'onmousedown' rather than an 'onclick' and voila, 0.5-click-shopping.

    Woo woo woo, let's make some money!!

    --
    Azrael - The Angel of Death
  • Sorry can't do that, ran out of points. But please, dear moderators. This is definitely bot Informative and Insightful.

    .ps I did sign the petition. And I've recently applied for my first patent, but the invention is mostly about mechanics so I should be /.-safe.

    --

  • If they're going to print it out along with the signatures, there's no point to having links to other sites, no matter how well placed in the text they may be.

    If they're going to submit the petition as a URL, with a note reading, "Hey, here's the petition, fire up your web browsers," then I hope the European politicians aren't as dismissive of web-based text as the American ones are.

    (Yes, I'm an American, and yes, I signed it.)
  • Usually, one could say yes, although all law-giving decisions have to happen unanimously.
    (In some rare cases with the approval of the European Parliament.)
    But as stated before it's only a bunch of directors of the European Patent Office. Which happens to earn money on every issued patent.
  • Well, you probably didn't invent C++ or Java either.

    Hahahhahahah! At least it's not PYTHON

  • you cant ... copyright something that should instead be trademarked

    Then what should we do with cartoon characters? Copyright them and get perpetual copyright [8m.com]? Or trademark them and get perpetually renewable trademark? Most companies <cough>Disney</cough>do both.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Others had similar solutions implemented, some of which, where you actually could not tell the difference.

    The danger here lies within the problem that small company who had it implemented before didn't patent it as its a common thing. and just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

    So the scenario here is that small company implements it, you don't see it. Big company implements it and patents it, you see it. And now you protect the big company's patent which infringes small company who had it implemented before. and small company are to remove the function, or pay royalties to big company.

    So Is this what you really want? - Think NOT!

  • Ich bin interessiert, an, Geschlecht mit einem weiblichen Schwein zu haben

  • Ahhh, but .PNG isn't animated. .MNG is.

  • Those Bastards! (Score:3)

    by pb ( 1020 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @06:10PM (#778404)
    Definitely sign the petition. I did, even if I'm only from 'North America'. :)

    Apparently in the US, computer programs strictly by themselves aren't patentable, but once they start doing something, (method for dimming lights in a greenhouse...) they are. I was reading through some random patent law the other day, the US patent office has strict, brain-dead guidelines as to what is and is not enforced.

    My question is, if most source is closed anyhow, how do we demonstrate 'prior art'? And, for that matter, how can you tell the code is really that old? Find an old backup tape as proof? Hope no one asks you if you faked it all yesterday? This could be somewhat hard to do with computer software...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • I think I agree with this (allow software patents but reduce the expiry date), however, I know from experience that it can take more than a year between filing an application and the patent actually being granted. In the UK, at least, the information in the patent does not become publically available until the patent is granted.

    It seems to me that if software patents were to expire after one year, the application process would have to speed up correspondingly.

    Molly.


  • Well, you probably didn't invent C++ or Java either.

    So I guess he can only patent certain "ways" of driving. Like driving by stepping on the pedal "once".

  • No, copyrights are OK. Open source depends on it. What they're fighting is patents, usually stupid shit patents we see all the time ie "one click patents" or other things patented SOLELY for the purposes of lawsuits, lawsuit defense, or royalty collection. Regulation is what we need but don't have, what we have but don't need are more software patents.
  • OK, look, I'll probably get moderated as a troll for saying this, but here goes:

    I've written code. Not a whole lot, but enough to know that a lot of work goes into things. I'm all for free software, but I also think that if the programmer of something wants to make money from his work, then he should be perfectly entitled to. If I ever wrote something original and cool, I'd want to be reimbursed in some way for the time that I put into it. I don't know that I'd patent it, especially under the current system, but it'd be really nice to see that my work is recognised, at some official level, as my own.

    Just my two cents. Moderate away, but please, don't do the usual "Slashdot says it's bad, so I'll moderate down all posts saying otherwise."

  • Is the light bulb really THAT different from a fire? I'm for copyright, but not patent, if it is used for the same purpose.

    A patent only lasts 17 years. A copyright can now go for about 100.

    Are you sure?
  • Five years is still too long. 5 years ago MS was just coming out with Win95, and Linux has gone from virtually unknown to semi-mainstream in that period. Two years is reasonable. It gives a company just enough head start to be established by the time anyone else is allowed to make a competing product, but it does not give the same sort of monopoly power that 5 years would.

  • That's why they can copyright their code, to prevent it from being stolen.

    Regardless of whether you think that it is right or wrong that an author should possess the right to forbid copying of his work, unauthorized copying is not the same as stealing.

    It's a broken analogy used by those who wish to exagerrate the seriousness of the offence of unauthorized copying.

    In short, copyright does nothing to hinder theft. It hinders copying.

  • > There's still a final conference to be
    > held in Novemeber to ratify the decision

    YM "rectify"
  • Some noteworthy ideas, including that of "open patent" development, which keeps resurfacing whenever patents are discussed, but doesn't really seem to have taken hold yet.

    Isn't that because patents cost $$$$? Even if all the little guys band together they'll have a hard time coming up with the cash to patent at the rate the larger companies do. It's really very unfair. I'm working on developing some algorithms, relevant to engineering computations, that I hope might be profitably patentable (with the intent of taking money from large companies and letting everyone else use them for free) but I don't even have the cash to consider filing a patent (and, to be honest, my work, while I think it's promising, isn't ready for prime-time yet.)

    It seems to me that, while we won't ever make the system so cash-neutral that unpatented prior art establishes an implicit patent (in contrast to copyrights), small-time software houses and programmers should collaborate on establishing a database on prior art. Unfortunately, I'm not sure who would pay the legal fees for defending it. Right now patents seem to be an exclusive right to any idea you want, so long as you have big money to defend your dubious claims in court.

  • >I still despise the EU because it is essentially a conglomeration of socialist irreligious states\

    ...and every citizen of the EU despises you back.

    'Innovative corporations' my arse.

  • You can make GIFs with no LZW compression, but the file size is quite a bit bigger.

    Try five times bigger.

    Also, I thought not even Mozilla supported MNG yet

    Depends on which build you run.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Against Software Patents, by the League for Programming Freedom (founded mostly by RMS):
    http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/articles/int-prop /lpf-against-software-patents.html [mit.edu].
    The article is a little bit out of date, but it does a good job of explaining the problems of software patents and has many specific examples. It's still a good introduction to the subject.
  • What the hell is an unelected bunch of managers of an organisation doing making wide-reaching policy decisions such as this which should a matter for elected lawmakers
    These unelected people have no law-making power. They were just given their opinion.

    It's exactly this kind of crap which makes so many of us in England against tighter integration with the EU.
    It's exactly that kind of ignorance from England that make English people so out-of-touch with reality.

  • Wrote to MEP Neil MacCormack (Scottish National Party, Scotland) saying what a bad idea software patents are and he replied...

    Thank you very much. I totally agree with you, and will be vigilant. So far, under questioning in Committee, Commissioner Bolkestein has held that the only extent to which software should be patentable is where it is embedded in a process or procedure, or piece of equipment, that would itselfbe patentable under existing patent law. Can you advise on that? Is even this oibjectionable on the same (correct) grounds as those on which you object to software patents m,ore generally?

    Which I didn't expect at all. Can anyone suggest what I should say in reply?

    Jonathan Riddell

  • Did Einstein patent "The Theory of Relativity", or "Special Relativity", or did Maxwell, or P.A.M. Dirac patent anything? NO! As stated by Einstein, "If they saw futher than others it because they stood on the sholders of giants,"

    One other important point is that Einstein once worked as a patent examiner. His level of cynicism appears badly missing from current patent offices world wide. At some time in the rescent past some moron came up with the idea that passing patents should be financially advantageous...
  • It's nice to keep on signing petitions and drumming up publicity, but sometimes I really begin to doubt if the governments of the world will ever get a clue that the current patent system doesn't work at all. The anti-EU-software patent petition received plenty of media attention (I think I even heard about it on CNN!), and it still hasn't proved successful.

    Thus someone needs to find out something as vital and easily disruptable as motor fuel deliveries which will affect the patent office.
  • want to finally rule on the batter.
    Well, I think it should be liberally applied to fish and deep fried, and I will be advising my Euro MP to vote for this.

    Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

  • For example, an obvious idea that can come up in every skilled person's head during his work will never be granted a patent. When you want a 20 year patent, you have to prove with examples and materials that your idea is indeed unique and worth the 20 year patent.

    Except with something like the US situation where the examiners are simply not competant, in the area, to judge if the idea is obvious.
    But rather than having a default of "fail" they operate a default of "pass" (and if it's invalid expect someone to be able to fight it out in court.)
  • IOne thing I will take issue with: your bringing up the millions of dollars companies spend. An idea is not and should not be patentable simply because you've spent millions on it.

    If some large organisation spent more that the GDP of a small country to come up with something "obvious" then more fool them.

    In fact, patents are MORE defensible for the little guy, the backyard inventor, the small startup with a good idea.

    Wasn't the original purpose of patents to protect the "little guy" from having their inventions ripped off by large companies anyway?
  • Copyright != patent
    Software license != patent
    Patents are quite a different beast.

    Applying patents to particular combinations of code or even resemblance to such would make for a bleak future. How meager our literature would be if, rather than programs constructed of computer language, it were possible to patent stories or genres constructed of written language?

    Copyrights and laws against plagarism are used to protect creative works, because patents have horrifyingly destructive long-term effects in such cases.

    You shouldn't be so quick to assume nobody around here thinks before taking a stance on something they strongly disagree with.
    ---
    Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
  • Good points. However, I, the software author should be able to patent an algorithm or an insightful concept. Will that make it harder for OSS, or other imitators to use my insights? yes, it would. Should it? Yes, it should.

    Patents should be used with care; if say Wankel hadn't patented the rotary engine, it's conceivable that more widespread use would've allowed technical and market success. OTOH, he could have died a poor(er) or less well-known man. It was his choice and he had to live with the consequences.

    I am against generalized patents as much as everybody else around here; what I am criticizing is the knee-jerk reaction on /. to carpet-bomb any pro-IP (pro-patent, pro-copyright) legislation or movement on behalf of the 'cause' of OSS.

    So, you're right, patents != licenses, but you wouldn't know it from the reactions around here: infringing on licenses (a form of IP protection) = bad on /.; infringing on patents/copyrights (another equally valid form of IP protection) = good on /.

  • AFAIK, according to the US patent system:
    Alfred patented a Bug then is Charly not allowed to use Bugs in any way without the explicit permit by Alfred.

    Contrary to the German patent system where patents don't apply to the research.

    (But it's surely common that the research is granted as it's completely in the interest of Alfred that Charly discovers something interesting which relies on Bugs)
  • You are an idiot. Pure and simple. The patents are all about a rare, time-limited PRIVILEDGE of monopoly that is granted to an indiviudal or corporation in exchange for an invention so profound and beneficial, that the society stands to gain great advantage from the invention's future use. Advantage so great that it outweighs all the evil of a patent.

    Rather this is what patents SHOULD be in practice all sorts of trivial, simple, obvious and derived things are getting patents.
    If they really did work this way then in excess of 90% of applications would be rejected.
  • It ensures that the money invested in a commercial development (invention) can be earned back from the work before others just copy and paste. That by itself is fair and forms an incentive for inventing things.

    However the original point of patents is the protection of innovation and invention. A creative process which is not really related to money. Hence it being possible to patent an invention without having to manufacture it...

    The second purpose of patents is to make them public. This is the point always missed. If you want to patent something, you will have to publicize it. That's the deal. The idea was, that others can learn from that and maybe develop something based on that.

    The other part of making it public is that it should mean that anything obvious (or plagurised) in a patent should result in an invalidation PDQ.
  • Please elaborate how 'developing a process and getting a pattent for it' is related to 'the effort that you put into driving a car'. Last time I checked, you had to purchase a car from a dealership (or another owner). When you did that you got the right/privillage to put that effort into driving the car. Your driving ability, like playing basketball, is not pattentable. there is no relationship. You also spent thousands of hours learning to walk. Should be pay you royalties too?

    Do you not agree with intelectual property rights? Do you have a better solution? If so please enlighten all of us. I'd like to think I have an open mind.
  • I am French, and I want to know if my goverment was for or against.

    Apparently France, Germany and the UK voted against. Maybe the rest of Europe has little software industry of their own, so they don't see the problems.

  • Simple Solution (Score:3)

    by Andy_R ( 114137 ) on Friday September 15, 2000 @03:33AM (#778431) Homepage Journal
    All we ave to do is give Alan Turing the patent on universal computing devices. It would then be impossible write software that's not covered by his prior art, and Turing has been dead long enough for the patent to have expired.

    Problem Solved!

  • Oh, great... (Score:4)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Friday September 15, 2000 @03:33AM (#778432)
    I can't believe that so many governments could be bought out by corporations. Like it or not, computer code is a written work, not a device. The only "device" involved in the execution of software is the computer itself, which reads the instructions embodied by computer software and takes actions accordingly.

    Written works are certainly protectable by copyright, and this is a Good Thing. A person's work should be protected. But copyrights, patents, and trademarks are meant to be mutually exclusive (you can't patent something that you could instead copyright, nor copyright something that should instead be trademarked, etc), and for a good reason. To claim patents on written works is to claim ownership of thought itself (not a specific thought, mind you, but ideas themselves); this can never be allowed.

    How to prove software is a written work? How does this strike you:

    "Mary had a little lamb."

    This is obviously a written work. Well out of copyright in this specific instance, but that's irrelevant; all we're looking for is written work (and preferably a short one, as we're going to be doing a lot with it). Were I to use the whole rhyme, and were it an original work, it could be copyrighted.

    María tenía un cordero pequeño.

    The same sentence, translated into Spanish (my Spanish is, sadly, somewhat rusty, so forgive me if I got something wrong). Still obviously a written work; it's well established that a translation of a written work is still a written work.

    program MaryLamb(output);

    type
    lamb: integer;

    var
    Mary: array[1..10] of lamb;

    begin
    Mary[1] := 1;
    end.

    The same thing, translated into Pascal (as with Spanish, my Pascal is very rusty, so I'd appreciate any corrections). 1 is certainly a "little" value relative to the set or integers, or "lambs" as I'm calling them here, so we still communicate that Mary had a little lamb. It's been established that source code is a written work. Translation, therefore, still has not violated that, and source code as itself should, as a written, copyrightable work, not be patentable. But let's take this a little further...

    /* MaryLamb.c */
    #define LAMB int

    int main() {
    LAMB *Mary;

    Mary = new LAMB;
    *Mary = 1;
    return 0;
    }

    A very rough translation of the MaryLamb program to C (and once again, my C is rusty). Translation from language to language doesn't make this a non-written work, does it?

    "Zmel umq m yvggyr ymzo."

    The English sentence again, but now it's ROT13'd. A simple one-to-one mapping of characters onto other characters; in other words, a cipher. However, it has been established that putting a written work into a cipher like this still does not affect its status as a written work.

    "Blue green red yellow orange."

    Same sentence, but I've mapped whole words now instead of characters. I've encoded it. But again, I haven't affected its status as a written work. I could get really crazy and map it to, say, Japanese katakana, but I'm not good with katakana and I would be willing to bet that the browsers of most Slashdotters wouldn't be able to display it anyway. But this is another type of encoding, where I've mapped parts of words (the syllables) rather than the whole words. And I still haven't affected the status.

    Now, let's go back to the C-language version. Suppose I were to translate that into assembly (substitute your favorite architecture's ASM here; I'm not about to start flamewars by picking one in particular). Still human-readable, still the same message. And still not in dispute over whether or not it's a written work.

    But now, let's run that through an assembler. What does this do?

    In simple terms, it maps the individual instructions in ASM to their machine-language equivalents. Nothing but a re-encoding (I'll deal with linkers momentarily). This is still human-readable, though relatively few people except chip designers ever take the required study to do it (reading machine code is hard though by no means impossible). In other words, simple translation and encoding. We still have a written work, unless you're going to apply a double-standard.

    Now, a program is more than the object code alone; other things are added to it to put it into an executable format (this is why linkers are necessary). But this is all still human-readable, if you take the time to learn it. In other words, by the definitions set earlier in this post, a program, in source or object form, is still provably a written work, and written works have been legally defined as unpatentable.

    There are other ways to prove that software cannot be legally patented, such as proving the fact that all software is, at heart, a mathematical equation (these are already defined as unpatentable). I've just taken a more unusual route, and one which negates the argument that programmers' works need to be protected by still allowing for that protection, but only for the actual work (by means of copyright).

    Comments? Corrections for any of the translations above?
    ----------
  • Some guy came up with the light bulb and he deserves a patent.

    But can you get an American and a Scot to agree who deserves the patent? The invention of this kind of electric lamp is still a highly political issue.
  • Since you are a slashdot poster, you infringe on Metallica's IP. Please stop it.

    It's also so very unfair that Metallica, having investing so much effort in creating their music, aren't allowed to patent it so that no other band can play the same kind of music as them. Music should be patentable too. And books - it's horrible seeing all these authors writing books in a genre someone else have created without being recompensated for their hard toil.

    --
    Niklas Nordebo | nino at sonox.com | +46-708-405095
  • "Do What Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, Love under Will" - Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law.

    A big pile of incomprehensible crap in the main, but there you have the famous lines, attributed correctly.

  • I'm all for free software, but I also think that if the programmer of something wants to make money from his work, then he should be perfectly entitled to. If I ever wrote something original and cool, I'd want to be reimbursed in some way for the time that I put into it.

    Thats great. Many of us share your sentiments. But what does it have to do with Patents? Patents don't help you sell your software -- they give you legal redress if another person writes software that uses some algo. that you've patented.

    Are you, by any chance, confusing patents with copyrights?

  • Re:Patents aren't necessarily bad... (Score:3)

    by Znork ( 31774 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @10:13PM (#778437)
    So, once you've done all that work writing the code, do you want to get sued for patent infringement?

    *That* is what software patents are about. Patenting things that a lot of people are bound to implement and 'invent' independent of the patent holder, not even knowing someone has done it before.

    Then you get sued for writing your program.
  • Are generalizations about the people on slashdot any better than those same 'carpet-bombing' reactions, though?

    I try not to get too discouraged by knee-jerk posts. Some contain interesting points, and those that don't... well... the posts I see don't neccessarily represent the views of the majority, just the more vocal slashdotters.

    I believe algorithms fall under unique mathematical procedures (I could be wrong about this reason) and are therefore patentable. As for insightful concepts, I see nothing wrong with patenting an innovative (real definition, not the "tack on an extra feature" application definition) procedure using software... just not broad coding concepts or processes, or pieces of software themselves.
    ---
    Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
  • I think that 5 years is ok. Plus a voidance clause. The patent becomes invalid if the method is in common use after one year from original filing date, combined with an invalidation if the patent holder does not inform standards groups of their patent (to get rid of shits like Rambus and Fraunhofer who dump their patent ridden excretions into standards and then tell the world). Plus bounty afforded on invalidating patents. Earn $50000 proving prior art on Amazons 1-click patent, for example, payable by amazon.
  • Amen.
    Now where are those mod points...
  • You know, I genuinely believe that the majority of /. readers aren't part of the 'jihad'. But, it certainly seems like the majority of the *posters* is. And I'd let that go and avoid broad generalization (which I agree, are bad), if /. hadn't become the mouthpiece of OSS.

    Have you seen all the Wired or Cnet, or Red Herring or Upside or whatever articles that mention /. stories (or even comments) as part of OSS-stories? People are getting the idea that the /. jihad is representative of OSS. How the hell am I supposed to convince my boss to open source even a small piece of software, when they think that OSS is full of 'fanatics', 'freaks' or 'pirates'?

    And I am speaking from experience too, with a very open-minded, young boss who's nothing like Dilbert's PHB. These kids do not only discredit me, but OSS itself as a practice. Thus, I shall generalize :-)...
  • A few years ago I read that most of Evans & Sutherland research fruits are not patented because that would simply let the secrets lose and help others (SGI) to copy.
    This patenting thing is mostly bullshit: companies patent things to gain value and to have ground to pick up legal fights at any time they wish. Patents are just food for lawyers..
    If tomorrow a caveman comes out with his wheel patent we are all screwed and we are going to have to "re-invent the wheel".
    The reason why most people here don't like patents it's cause we are coders not bullshit businessmen.

    Thank you.
  • I'm not going to sign it. Just because everyone on /. seems to be so much against software patants doesn't mean I should sign it. Whenever some silly patents comes out that doesn't fall under the domain of software /. posts it as a humor story and everyone posts comments saying, "I gotta get me one of these mechanic masturbators!" and nobody objects to it. But in reality, it's just the same situation of some company/guy gaining ownership of something we've all thought of, but never designed or patented. Those types of patents might be wrong, but the reason we don't usually object to most patents is because they make sense and are necessary. Just as some software patents might be necessary. It's true that many are probably not legitimate, but some program can be truly innovative and patenatble.

    Just because we believe in free software and because we would like to see companies put less restrictions on their software does not mean that we should complete take away people's right to their intellectual property when they really deserve it. What we should really be doing is asking the EU to be more rational than the US in granting software patents. Either way, we haven't gotten this far by whining. The strongest way of protesting is by showing that our way works better. So why don't we just keep on doing that?

    wow. i'm really drunk. i better get to bed.
  • IIRC, LZW isn't used in ALL GIF images. You can make GIFs with no LZW compression, but the file size is quite a bit bigger.

    Also, I thought not even Mozilla supported MNG yet...?
  • > You'd think with all the bucks in /. the guys could afford to implement a
    > link-checker in their production system.

    No, they will buy all the rights to the Hitchhiker's Guide and change the story. It is easyer then trying to persuade the /. team to check the links. :)
    --
  • Actually, not much of OSS is based on protected intellectual property, except as to work around the concept, either putting it into public domain or enforcing distributability. The foundation of both OSS and the internet lies largely in not-for-profit non-proprietary software.

    You seem to miss the point that people write software without IP protection. They even write software to get around IP. Virtually every useful but patented software has gotten its own unencumbered workalike. RSA has multiple replacements. GIF has multiple replacements. mp3 replacements are in progress. And they are obviously *not* clones or copies, but new 'inventions', considering they are workarounds for patents.
  • Well, you're right in that no one should be able to patent something that we've all thought of at one time or another. And software patents might be more feasable if they didn't last for so long!

    (17 years is a ridiculously long time to have complete control of something in computing; 17 years ago, we didn't have the Macintosh, and Microsoft actually had competition!)

    However, the real reason I'm against software patents is that it comes down to patenting code, and algorithms, which is just as bad as patenting math. It would piss me off to no end to spend some time inventing a new, awesome, fast sorting algorithm (for instance), distribute it, write papers about it, whatever; and then get a cease-and-desist letter telling me that some other company just got a broad patent on *my idea* because they had something like that in the works a year ago. Screw that.

    Or, for that matter, think of any significant advancement in computing or math or physics in the last 17 years, and say "what if this had been patented instead?" I can give you a few that have: GIF and RSA. In both cases, they became standards, so everyone used them, but because they were patented, everyone found alternatives, too; and now we have PNG and Blowfish and whatnot. (But what if *those* had been patented.... Sheesh.)

    I wish most posters on slashdot were as kind and polite as you are. If being drunk is what it takes, then I say to you all, drink up!
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Hmmm... Time to dust off my old commodore disk drive.. set up a 64 emulation and code DVD DeCSS, Napster, one click shopping and a few other things. Save it all on old 5 1/4 inch disks.. print out 1980s style disk lables.. Then save the day with a bunch of prior art...

    Ok I'm being silly... the one click shopping BTW would be a BBS instead of a website and it would be a SID napster instead of MP3s..

    Then what.. Then they look in the copyright database and find none of it existed...
    Wops...

    If you can get old enough then it's during a time when copyrights had to be regestured to be recognised.
    With public domain you can find a user group with a software libary that can conferm the software is from the 1970s or 80s... or a company like WC Cdrom that can certify the software was on an old CDrom sold during the early 1990s.

    For newer stuff you need FreshMeat who tracks when the software was first announced on FM what version and what features came later on...

    One of the first software patent horror storys I heard was a patent on a software tecnque allready in commen use. I suspect the patent itself was long sence eliminated due to heavy amounts of prior art..
    Proving it isn't much of an issue.. it's pritty easy to provide at least a whitness if not documentation of age...
    The problem is the patent office dosn't seem to care about doing any real prior art search...
  • You also spent thousands of hours learning to walk. Should be pay you royalties too?
    Obviously, the first person to walk should have patented it and charged everyone else money to walk. And if you invent a cool new way to walk, patent that too:

    1. Walking backwards. Now you can travel and see where you've been! Protect yourself from surprise rear attacks! Check you haven't left anything behind!

    2. Walking sideways. Keep an eye out for cross-winds. Ideal on pavements (US=sidewalks) to avoid cars straying off the road way, and for looking in shop windows.

    3. Walking on hands. Don't dirty your shoes.

    4. Walk on one hand and one foot. Cut your shoe bill in half!

    I am going to patent all these methods of locomotion. True enough, they only took me 30 seconds to think up, so the 0.05 cents I'm planning on charging per pace may be a little disproportionate. Still, nobody said life was fair.

  • I used to be pro-EU, but two recent events have changed my mind.

    Firstly the proposed scrapping of football transfer fees, which would put my club, and others, out of business within a few years. Now we have this.

    It looks like the revelution is starting, judging by the few days of chaos resulting from blocking the fuel depots. Maybe an anti-EU one is just around the corner?

  • To my fellow Europeans (Score:5)

    by h_jurvanen ( 161929 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @08:43PM (#778458)
    Every time something like this has come up in the US, some Europeans have been pretty snide, remarking about how fascist and corporation-driven America has become, and generally taking a superior attitude. It's time to wake up and see that the same powers are moving inside Europe, but just taking a little longer to make their wishes known. Once they see the kind of legal protections that American companies are getting, they will demand the same in the name of "fairness," "competition," etc. The largely nebulous enlightenment of Europe and Europeans may soon fall victim to raw corporate power. Don't rest easy!

    Herbie J.

  • Agree and disagree (Score:5)

    by morven2 ( 5718 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @08:54PM (#778459)
    It is, indeed, fundamentally illogical to suggest that one should be able to patent hardware but not software that does the same thing.

    The problem in the US is not so much software patents *per se*, but how badly the US Patent Office has gone about issuing and regulating them.

    I have no problem with people being able to patent something truly innovative, whether the product of lots of hard work or a sudden flash of inspiration.

    One should not be able just add '... on the Internet' to existing ideas and patent them, for example.

    One thing I will take issue with: your bringing up the millions of dollars companies spend. An idea is not and should not be patentable simply because you've spent millions on it. In fact, patents are MORE defensible for the little guy, the backyard inventor, the small startup with a good idea.

    If you spent a million dollars and came up with a poor, lame-ass idea that's not all that original, you don't deserve a patent for it.

  • Anarchy State and Utopia (Score:4)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @08:58PM (#778461) Homepage
    The philosopher Robert Nozick made a fascinating argument on patents in his book "Anarchy, State and Utopia"
    The gist is that a patent is perfectly just as long as the idea is sufficiently non-obvious that nobody else would think of it for the duration of the patent.
    1 click shopping wouldn't take 20 years to come up with, but vulcanized rubber is another matter entirely.
    I think that 5 year patents for software are perfectly reasonable, it's the 20 year deal that makes it absurd. The industry just moves too fast.
    What do you guys think?
    --Shoeboy
  • Imagine your using the KMP-algorithm in your programm as it's the fastest known (not true, of course) and free algorithm to search a substring in a string.
    Now in progress of your programming, you have the idea to modificate the algorithm, (e.g. like Boyer-Moore).
    Now you have to search wether this modificated-algorithm is patented or not. Which costs money or at least time.
    If it's not patented, you'll have to patent it in order to protect your idea. This does surely costs money (a four decimal number AFAIK).
    For a company like, say Big Blue or Microsoft, which have a legal departement as large as most small companies it's no problem.
    But for a small software company or even a single programmer this are major obstacles.

    Of course, if someone has a revolutionary idea, like solving the Travelling-salesman-problem in O(n^2), one surely deserves the money.

    But wouldn't you think, that the same programmer would get a fairly decent job for his further work.
  • *Sigh*
    Here we go again....

    > Copyright!? on software!? unbelievable!

    Patents have NOTHING to do with copyrights. They are TOTALLY independent entities.

    I'm not going to explain it all here, as it's been said many times before by better ppl than me in better ways than I could say it. Go and read about it.

    All I will say is that copyrights and licenses are about choice (if you dont like the license, choose another product - there are likely many others)
    Whereas patents are about monopilies (albeit temporary.) You will have fewer choices when finding a product containing patented code because not everyone can afford the royalties they would have to pay to the monopolist(s).

    Copyright & Licenses bring choice for the consumer and a more competitive market.
    Software Patents will (IMO) result in few big rich companies, and the small ppl will suffer.

  • What I'd like to know is why the patent office can make this decision in the first place. The law is made by governments (or EU directives implemented by national governments) and then it is the patent office's job to implement those decisions. Not vice-versa.

    BTW: citizens of EU countries, sign the petition if you haven't already.

  • Got a solution. (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @06:14PM (#778475)
    I say we yankees mail them and say "Thanks for agreeing with us. Ever since the Boston Tea Party you guys have been trying to one up us. Glad you've finally seen the light!"

    If that don't sink this bill... I don't know what will.

    --

  • It would be very ironic if it should turn out that europe would have greater freedom than we have in the USA.

    hmmmm . . .

    hey, wait a minute .....

    - - - - - - - -
    "Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."

  • take Thoreau's advice to "Do what thou wilst will be the whole of the law"

    Um, I think that was Alasteir Crowley. :)

  • Try working around this one: (Score:3)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @09:04PM (#778483) Homepage Journal

    yes, it is almost always possible to work around [software patents]

    Let's see how you'd work around this:

    • A web site does not sell merchandise; it has to support itself somehow <cough>banner ads</cough>.
    • Banner ads nowadays must be animated, or no advertisers will apply.
    • Unisys owns the LZW compression method (U.S. Patent 4,558,302 and foreign counterparts) used in all GIF images.
    • The licensing terms for the LZW patent are incompatible with all free software licenses.
    • The only other GIF-like animated graphics format supported by web browsers is MNG, and it only works in 6.x browsers such as Mozilla.
    • It's possible to write a plug-in to display MNG images on pre-6.x browsers, but browsers reject unsigned plug-ins.
    • Signing plug-ins requires a certificate from VeriSign, and this is beyond the budget of individual free software developers.
    <_
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • A point that a lot of people have missed is that the 'common sense' argument you point out is currently held by the EU. Under EU law, you can patent software, but only if it exhibits a 'novel technical effect'. My understanding of it is that this disallows any mathematically based or internal algorithmic patents (eg, the RSA patent or one that I heard about where somebody effectively had a patent on a binary search), but allows patents of new ways to make a system behave (eg BTs patent on something that approximates hyperlinks, as discussed recently) as long as nobody can show prior art.

  • To me at least, all a computer is is an automating machine. So a "paint" program couldn't be patented because the prior art would be using paint brushes and such. It causes the same results, though perhaps the computer can make it faster. However, the code itself can be copyrighted, as it is... well... something you did- a specific way to acheive a specific effect.

    Now, when you start to patent things such as "1-click shopping" you have to think this, "Was there ever a similar idea WITH OR WITHOUT A COMPUTER?" Because a computer is just a tool to make life easier (or in the lawyer's case, harder) I would say that there was a very similar thing to "1-click shopping" called "put it on my tab". If you were reconized by the bar (or Starbucks or whatever), they would know you would come in later to pay it off. You could quite litterally say "Hey, I'm buying this but I don't have the money on me now." and the manager wouldn't mind.

    The real problem is that most people don't see a computer as just a tool that helps to automate work. They see it as a psuedo-magical thing that just does... stuff. And because this magical thing just does this stuff, its prior art would be different then any other prior art.

    Is the light bulb really THAT different from a fire? I'm for copyright, but not patent, if it is used for the same purpose.

  • This discussion isn't about IP. You can copyright code to prevent it from being stolen, but that isn't enough for them apparently. Now they want to be able to patent software.

    In the real world, you can only patent a specific process, for example, using such and such robots in such and such way to automate the process of making a car as Volvo no doubt holds - but other car companies can use a different process that is equally automated. That's the way it is now with copyright on programs. You can't do it that specific way, but you're free to make something compatible that does the same but in a different way.

    With the ability to patent software, you're not patenting a specific process anymore, but all processes that do the same thing, effectively ruling out all competition.

    Software is already intellectual property, and that's a good thing. Nobody can take the Linux kernel and put it into their commercial program without keeping the kernel's source open, because Linux is the intellectual property of Linus Torvalds. Anybody is able, however, to create a kernel that does the same things as the Linux kernel but with different code, but under patent that wouldn't be possible anymore. If the UNIX kernel were patented instead of copyrighted, Linux wouldn't have existed...

    )O(
    Never underestimate the power of stupidity
  • scamp was one of the folks who wrote from Europe with the news that an administrative board for the European Patents Office has voted 10-9 to allow patents for software in Europe

    What the hell is an unelected bunch of managers of an organisation doing making wide-reaching policy decisions such as this which should a matter for elected lawmakers

    It's exactly this kind of crap which makes so many of us in England against tighter integration with the EU.

    Rich

  • oh!! (Score:3)

    by Kwikymart ( 90332 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @06:16PM (#778496)
    I get first dibs on 1-click buying [oreilly.com]

  • Will they ever learn? (Score:3)

    by vertical-limit ( 207715 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @06:17PM (#778498)
    It's nice to keep on signing petitions and drumming up publicity, but sometimes I really begin to doubt if the governments of the world will ever get a clue that the current patent system doesn't work at all. The anti-EU-software patent petition received plenty of media attention (I think I even heard about it on CNN!), and it still hasn't proved successful.

    What kind of contingency plans do we have should software patents to be approved? If we can't get the governments to listen to us, what do we do? Keep on trying to draw support, or simply take Thoreau's advice to "Do what thou wilst will be the whole of the law" and ignore all this patent crap. We can't let the future of technology be placed into the hands of a few corrupt individuals, and it looks like we're going to fight them at every turn.

  • I've invested a great deal of effort in driving a car. Due to my great deal of effort, you should not be permitted to drive without paying me for permission to drive.
  • If a company is given a software patent he should only hold for at most 3 years I think is somewhat fair. As someone stated before patents can help protect the money invested in creating the software. Since software changes so much all the time and usefulness of thing can quickly vanish. I think that is a fair amount of time.
  • In short, copyright does nothing to hinder theft. It hinders copying.

    Ofcourse laws and regulations don't prevent theft, because theft by definition breaks those laws and regulations. Copyrighting your code doesn't prevent it from being stolen, but it does give you a weapon to fight the thieves.

    As for copying not being stealing - if what you copy is copyrighted and the way in which you copy it breaks that copyright, then it quite definitely equates to stealing.

    )O(
    Never underestimate the power of stupidity
  • if the programmer of something wants to make money from his work, then he should be perfectly entitled to.

    That's why they can copyright their code, to prevent it from being stolen. If they stay on the ball, they'll be able to outpace those who pick up the concept after them, because they have to start working on making something that does the same as your program all from scratch.

    Unless ofcourse if the one who picks up the ball is Microsoft, but in that case you'd be screwed under patent too. Instead of outpacing you, they'd then simply buy you out or otherwise crush you and in the process get a hold of your patent.

    See, when you patent code, you prevent anybody from making a program that does the same thing. You can sit back, relax, and rake in the cash. Under copyright, you'll have to stay on the ball, keep innovating, and Goddess forbid, actually fix bugs, otherwise other companies will pass you with their superior implimentation.

    )O(
    Never underestimate the power of stupidity
  • actually, you WOULD be allowed to compile your own windows. just not distribute it to anyone else.

    //rdj
  • I'm trying to get some media coverage of the
    terrible decision that is about to be made,
    and I need some help in presenting the arguments.

    The most difficult thing is to briefly explain
    newcomers that although patents seem to serve
    protection of Intellectual property, they do exactly the opposite.

    Does anyone have (pointers to) examples of US
    startups that had their innovations taken away
    from them by a large company with a trivial patent
    portofolio?

    If it is all so bad, my audience asks me, how
    come the american IT startups are still in existence and drive the stockmarket booms?

    I noticed it is very difficult to find (european) politicians that know about the issue, or even
    ones that know which fellow party members are
    supposed to cover this topic.

    Well, still two months to keep trying to convince
    some people...
  • Closed source applications do not constitute prior art for purposes of patentability. Only published or otherwise disclosed methods constitute prior art. I wouldn't even be surprised if open source applications are not necessarily considered prior art in all situations.

    It is therefore vitally important that if you want something from getting patented by someone else, you publish it or disclose it. That applies no matter whether you want to use the method for proprietary or for open source purposes. The best thing to do is probably to make a disclosure directly to the patent office, in addition to publishing on USENET and (if you can) in some forum that is archived on paper.

    And if you are with a commercial entity in the habit of patenting stuff, consider disclosing instead: it's much cheaper, quicker, and requires less time, and it protects you against infringement claims by others just as well as a patent.

  • Non-Babelfished translation (Score:5)

    by vertical-limit ( 207715 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @06:29PM (#778517)
    Been a while since I've had German, but this should get the meaning across:

    The board of directors of the European Patent Office voted to allow the unrestricted patenting of software. The authority recommends the cancellation of the current clause of the European patent convention which states that computer programs "as such" are not patentable.

    In doing so, the EPA placed itself in the same boat as the proponents of software patents -- mostly international corporations that want a change in the European legal situation towards one more similar to the United States and Japan, where where software is practically patentable without restriction. The German delegation in the 19-member EPA committee voted against the raid in 10-to-9 decision.

    Programmers of free software as well as smaller software houses stand against software patents, since the potential danger of patent suits from larger corporations makes their work practically impossible. Already today large American companies protect themselves with numerous patents on minor developments - a move which also allows them to resist by counter suits if another enterprise files a patent infringement suit against them. However, free programmers and small companies do not have the financial means in order to be able to exact such a strategy and therefore formed an alliance against software patents.

    The endorsement of software patents by the EPA modifies nothing in the existing legal situation, but serves as a preliminary decision for a conference in November, where the nations that have taken part in the EPA want to finally rule on the batter. At the beginning of of July, leaks from the European Union indicated that the organization did not want to permit American-style software patents in Europe. However, organizations, like the EuroLinux alliance and the Linux federation LIVE, pointed out that the commission had, at the time, already ruled itself as being basically unopposed to software patents.

  • Bruce Perens on patents (Score:5)

    by bat'ka makhno ( 207538 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @06:32PM (#778518)
    A couple years ago, Bruce Perens penned Preparing for the Intellectual-property Offensive [linuxworld.com] for LinuxWorld. It's an interesting perspective on the potential for the subversion of the patent system by unscrupulous (is there any other kind?) proprietary software vendors.

    Some noteworthy ideas, including that of "open patent" development, which keeps resurfacing whenever patents are discussed, but doesn't really seem to have taken hold yet.
    --
    Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
    H. Rap Brown

Slashdot Top Deals

Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes. -- Mickey Mouse

Close