EU Patent Wars to Resume

replicant108 writes "Ciaran O'Riordan of the FSFE gives a concise analysis of why the EU Software Patent Wars will resume this winter. Apparently the pro-patent side have changed their strategy — this time they plan to bypass the legislative powers and target the judiciary instead. The goal is to transfer power from the national courts (which often rule against software patents) to a specially-created European Patent Court which will be controlled by the pro-software patent EPO!"

Re:A hippocratic oath for coders?

[91degrees]

Perhaps. Don't think it would be all that popular though.

While I'm quite strongly against software patents, my opposition isn't quite as great as my opposition to being unemployed and ineligible for unemployment benefit.

Re:That's ingenious!

[Shaper_pmp]

Indeed!

Clearly "legal strategy" patents are essential - after all, without legal strategy patents lawyers couldn't own their own discover-... idea-.. inventions.

Then there would be no driving economic force behind legal innovation, and the entire legal industry would stagnate, retarding the progress of the Unites States/Europe and ensuring that legal development only took place in other countries...

No, wait-

Re:A hippocratic oath for coders?

[smchris]

Perhaps we should start a hippocratic oath for coders that entails immediate resignation from any employer who attempts to enforce their software patents?

An anti-hypocritical oath for judges to serve their society instead of their corporations would probably be more effective.

Re:A hippocratic oath for coders?

[Bizzeh]

"i have no job, no house, no food, and my wife has left me. but at least i have good morals"

Re:Like Terrorists....

[rolfwind]

The depressing thing with your strategy is that, even if it works, it will set us a generation behind. This is also the sort of thing that will have the US/Europe fall behind Asia in these areas.

The other obvious thing to point out is that patents were made to advance civilization and promote progress - largely w/o protection of patents, look how far the computer software industry has advanced. I could make a good case this would not be so if patent were around raising the bar of entry (actually, look at Universities - they are the forebearers of progress and are, er, were mostly open in research). It becomes obvious then that the reason for software patents is not to promote progress, but to protect corporations (corporate protectionism). Any politicians considering this should just be thrown out immediately by their electorate. There is absolutely no excuse to promote them. They literally want to suppress the little guy without an extensive patent portfolio to "cross-license" with the big boys.

Socialism at it's best. History is repeating itself, types of government have ceased to matter (democracy, socialist, communist), corporations/money run the place.

Re:Won't work

[tjeffer]

The original poster is talking about the difference between civil law countries and common law countries. In common law countries, the courts create common law that is every bit as binding as legislative law. In civil law countries, the courts are only supposed to enforce the laws of the legislature and are not supposed to formulate their own laws. The US is a common law country, while most of the EU are based on the civil law system.

Re:Patents are bad!

[91degrees]

It also has to cover the risk of failure. Many drugs cost as much to research but then don't pass final approval.

But actually, the above statement is a lie to fool the naive. The reason it costs so much is that they can charge what the hell they like, and once the price goes higher than that, the demand falls.

Patents would be much better if there was some way to force patent holders to licence to anyone for reasonable fees.

Re:And they still wonder?

[sepluv]

I disagree if you are, as you seem to be, implying any of the following:

1. Member states' non-EU-directive-based laws relate strongly to the morals of their people.
2. The morals of everyone in a single member state tend to agree, or there is more variation in morals between than within member states.
3. Most people have any moral position on the esoteric stuff the EU deals with.

Re:A hippocratic oath for coders?

[crosbie]

I was actually quite careful to demonstrate a sense of proportion.

We are talking about a legal mechanism that determines whether human software engineers are free, or not free, to develop software.

There is no co-existence.

Either these people are free, or they are not (they must ensure they have permission from patent holders).

Which world do you prefer?

A world in which some people may control what algorithms other people are or are not permitted to utilise in their software (even if they typically independently reinvent them), or a world in which people are free to develop software without any need to obtain anyone else's permission?

As to dealing with this issue, I am indeed proposing how to do so.

Oh please...

[Zeinfeld]

The problem is not software patents, its crap USPTO patents that should never have been issued.

The EU Patent office is not the diploma mill that the USPTO has become. And the USPTO itself was much more sensible until the 1980s when Reagan tried to turn it into a profit center.

There are legit software patents, the RSA algorithm for example is a non trivial piece of intellectual work. 98% of software, business model and genetic patents are unadulterated crap but that does not mean that there is no legitimacy possible.

The Free Software movement is fixated on ending software patents because that is the personal obsession of RMS. It is not a realistic political goal. Reform of the USPTO on the other hand is very realistic and can gain support from both Open Source advocates and from the major software companies like IBM and Microsoft. The diploma mill even hurts the legitimate small inventor who has actually invented something. Send a notice of infringement to any large company today and it will be ignored. There are simply too many notices sent, to get attention you now have to file suit.

I wrote an essay on how we could reform the USPTO its on my blog [blogspot.com] some time I will get round to finishing part 4.

Re:That's ingenious!

[Jerry]

Not really.

The core of this "strategy" is as old as prostitution: Pay of politicians and judges, directly or indirectly. Giant Multi-National corporations have the money to corrupt those individuals, FOSS projects to not. Only a grassroots groundswell of massive protest can fight the money.

That means exposing every person associated with the "judical system" in question to see what their connection is to Microsoft.

Re:oh dear

[Barraketh]

Here's the way I see it:

There is no inborn right to "own" intellectual property - you can't really own IP, since cost of replication is zero. Thus, the government provlides you with a temporary monopoly to compensate the time and money invested in the development of the invention. The government doesn't do this out of some magical concept of fairness, or because the invention is somehow yours - again, once an idea is out in public, it's everyone's. The government does this to promote innovation, figuring that otherwise people wouldn't invest the work needed to develop said invention. However, there must be a balance - if the patent time is too long, people aren't free to build and improve on the invention, and innovation suffers. If the patent time is too short, then people may be reluctant to make large invenstments in developing the invention, and innovation suffers.

Now apply this thinking to the software field. The reason why software patents are unnecessary is twofold:
1) The software market is changing so quickly, that being first to market is often conpensation enough in itself. Having patents in the software market last more than a few years is ludicrous, since they would then often be obsolete, and if the patents are that short, there's very little reason to have them there.
2) It costs very little money to develop a software algorithm - all you need is a pen and a piece of paper. Compare this to the medical field for example, where companies have to spend billions on developing a drug, and then billions more testing it. With software, if you have a good idea, that's all you need.

What these two factors achieve, is that we have no reason to think that there is a lack of innovation because there are no software patents. It seems that software patents might make software producers richer, but that people would still be in the software business without patents. Again, contrast with the medical industry, where if you spend $billions on developing a drug, and then someone goes and replicates it that's a fast way to go out of business. And if there is no reason to think that lack of software patents is hurting innovation, why have them?

P.S. Yes, I realize the medical industry claims can also be disputed, but that's a different argument.

hear, hear!

[N3wsByt3]

This is about the same thing I said to the FFII: our struggle is too passive; we're just waiting and fending off attempts to get softwarepatents validated.

What we *should* be doing is being more pro-active, and try to get a law passed (or at least proposed) which would unify the patent law (which, on itself, is a good thing), but which explicitly forbids patents on software.

We can never win on the long run, if we only defend, and the megacorps keep attacking: WE have to be pushing forwards with our goal as well, so THEY are in the defense!