Sanity's Journal: Working the system

I have been corresponding via email with the MEP (Member of the European Parliament) for Leinster, Ireland (where I grew up) about my fears over the introduction of software patents in the EU.

Here is my most recent email (slightly edited), the article I refer to is one written by Arlene McCarthy, a UK MEP that is pushing for software patents in the EU - you can learn about her misguided perspective here. While this isn't the article I refer to in my email, it says pretty-much the same thing.

If you live in the EU - particularly if you are involved in a business that you think could be hurt by software patents, please please please contact your MEP and educate them about these issues - find your MEP here. Mrs Doyle was responsive to email, but some might respond better to fax or even phone calls. It is particularly important to stress the negative economic impact that software patents will have, and specific examples relating to your business will also be useful.

Dear Mrs Doyle,

Many thanks for your email. I am most grateful to you for your interest and help in this area, particularly since this may not have been an issue familiar to you previously. Please feel free to share my concerns with anybody you think can help, including Mr Wuermeling.

In her article Mrs McCarthy says "At a time when many of our traditional industries are migrating to China and Eastern Europe and when we Europeans are having to rely on our inventiveness to earn our living, it is important for us to have the revenue secured by patents and the licensing out of ideas".

Unfortunately, the only Europeans that are likely to benefit from the proposed changes are those that own stock in large American multi-nationals like Microsoft and IBM, and those that make a living as Intellectual Property lawyers. Europeans who consume software, and Europeans that work for smaller software firms that have neither the time or resources to apply for patents on every trivial idea they come up with, will be the victims.

I can categorically state, as someone that has worked in the software industry for my entire professional life and founded three software companies, one in the UK, one in the US, and one with offices in the US and Ireland, that I have never once seen a software patent being used in a manner that would help anybody's economy. Rather, I have seen them used as a way for large software companies to stifle their competition, not by delivering a better cheaper product to their customers, but by aggressively patenting everything in sight then throwing law suits at their competitors. This article describes exactly how this happens - in that case, it was IBM shaking down Sun in the 1980s:

http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044_print.html

Some claim that software patents are ok provided that they aren't on trivial or obvious techniques or innovations within the software industry. The problem is that it can be difficult, or even impossible, to confirm that a software patent application meets these criteria - therefore (as has been seen in the United States) the Patent Office will be under pressure to "pass the buck" by granting the patent and letting the courts sort it out down the line. This encourages exactly the kind of litigation that Intellectual Property lawyers love, but which can drive a small software firm out of business.

Intellectual Property lawyers quickly become experts at taking a simple obvious idea, and turning it into a patent application that totally obfuscates what is being patented, and how simple and obvious it really is. I have seen patents on techniques where even the inventor of the technique in question (not the person who filed for the patent) did not recognize that the patent actually covered their idea!

The software industry has thrived without software patents, and where such patents have been permitted their application has done nothing but inhibit progress and competition within the software industry. If the European Patent system must be harmonized, let it be harmonized to something sensible, lets not blindly emulate the mistakes of the United States.

Kind regards,

Ian Clarke