EU Board Votes To Allow Software Patents

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.

Those Bastards!

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].

Simple Solution

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...

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?
----------

Re:Patents aren't necessarily bad...

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.

To my fellow Europeans

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

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

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

Got a solution.

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.

--

Try working around this one:

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]

oh!!

I get first dibs on 1-click buying [oreilly.com]

Will they ever learn?

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.

Re:Patents aren't necessarily bad...

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

Non-Babelfished translation

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

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