EU Moves Towards Single European Patent Standard 234
theodp writes "A European Parliament committee Tuesday moved toward setting the first pan-European standard for software patents, but outlawed the U.S. practice of patenting business methods, such as Amazon's one-click Internet shopping. 'The European law sets the right benchmark rather than the looser U.S. system,' said the director of public policy for Europe at the Business Software Alliance, which represents 20 software companies including Microsoft and Apple. Amazon representatives in Brussels declined to comment on the new European legislation."
Re:1.0 is never perfect (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, you got it.
Re:1.0 is never perfect (Score:5, Informative)
The following is (c) wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.
Patents originated in England with the Statute of Monopolies 1693 under King James I of England. Prior to this time, the King could issue letters patent providing any person with a monopoly to produce particular goods or provide particular services. This power was widely abused; thus Parliament restricted it through the Statute of Monopolies so that the King could only issue them to the inventors of original inventions for a fixed number of years. Section 6 of the Statute refers to "manner[s] of new manufacture...[by] inventors", and this section remains the foundation for patent law in England and Australia. The Statute of Monopolies was latter developed by the courts to produce modern patent law; this innovation was soon copied by other countries.
You know, there already were laws prior to the Declaration of Independence and the drafting of the Constitution..
Not good (Score:5, Informative)
On the sorta-plus side, in the long term, the very concept of I.P. might be pushed closer to collapsing under its own weight. The USA and now the EU are deluding themselves if they think that China will continue to honour Western I.P. laws for ever. To echo a post on
Business methods ARE patentable (Score:3, Informative)
In the future, european businesses will compete, not on programming, but on paying patent lawyers. Remember: just because you wrote a program yourself doesn't mean you'll be allowed to distribute it. The result? Punishing innovation. [ffii.org]
Very misleading article (Score:5, Informative)
The European Commission has proposed to override the current clear and uniform European patentability rules (Art 52 EPC: "mathematical methods, schemes and rules for mental activity, methods of doing business and programs for computers are not patentable inventions") and replace them by a confusing set of nationally implementable rules which authorise patenting of algorithms and business methods, as it has been practised at the European Patent Office (EPO), openly since 1998 and more or less covertly since 1986.
The "European Parliament committee" cited in the article is the European Parliament's Commission on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market (JURI). Some members of this comittee submitted amendments to the European Commission's software patent directive proposal. While some Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are asking to bring the directive in line with Art 52 EPC so as to clearly restate that programs for computers are not patentable inventions, another group of MEPs is endorsing the EPO's recent practice of unlimited patentability, shrouded in more or less euphemistic wordings.
What happened Tuesday is the vote of some pro-software-patenting amendements by the JURI. Theese amendments will now be presented to the plenary of the European Perliament for decision during the first week of either july or september.
It's definitely VERY BAD news.
This site [ffii.org] summarizes the situation and the efforts from all around Europe to fight software patenting.
Some information on patents (Score:5, Informative)
In Europe, the patents can be issued for the entire union from the central office. This is much more expensive than in the US, primarily because everything has to get professional, technical transaltions into three langauges. However, even though the patents are issued for the entire EU, they are actually enforced locally in each country. Different European countries have different criteria and standards, the same patent may very well be ruled to apply in one country but not in another. I think the article deals with some guidlines regarding software and business methods; I don't believe it will change the overall picture and it should be seen in that context.
Some quick points about software and business methods in the US. In general, for these to be patentable, they must fulfill the following (these are some of the important conditions in lay mans terms):
-It must be new, in other words no records that anyone has ever done it before
-It must provide a tangible benefit - pure mathematics or very abstract and general algorithms do not work
-It cannot be obvious, even to professionals in the field
-The inventor must demonstrate that he or she actually knows how to implement it (preferably by doing so)
- The patent is only valid for the implementation that the inventor describes
These are actually quite reasonable conditions, wouldn't you say? I have not read the infamous one-click shopping patent, but note that generally speaking it is not possible to patent "shopping by only one click", you have to describe how you do it, and the patent is only valid for that implementation. Of course, sometimes it is possible to be quite general in the description, such as "save the customer's info in a memory, recognize customer by a cookie, initiate transaction based on saved data when customer clicks shopping button". On top of that the one-click patent is questionable from the obviousness criterium.
I wish to point out, however, that the set of patents that get discussed on Slashdot are the examples of extreme outliers when it comes to obviousness and generality. Frequently they are also misunderstood and exagerated, either by the original magazine, the story submitter or both.
For example, a few weeks ago there was a story on Amazon patenting selling used items next to new ones. A dozen people got 5, insightful ratings for pointing out how crazy this was. In fact, the patent only covered a specific technique of soliciting new sellers (or something similar).
Tor
Re:Some information on patents (Score:3, Informative)
Here is the one-click patent [uspto.gov]. It's pretty broad:
1. A method of placing an order for an item comprising:
under control of a client system,
displaying information identifying the item; and
in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system;
under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system,
receiving the request;
retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and
generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and
fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item
whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.
Re:1.0 is never perfect (Score:5, Informative)
But the concept of patent appeared about 500 B.C. in the Greek colony of Sybaris. The Sybarites, who enjoyed living in luxury, made a law that if any confectioner or cook should invent any peculiar and excellent dish, no other artist was allowed to make this dish for one year. He who invented it was entitled to all the profit to be derived from the manufacture of it for that time.
On a side note, the earliest English letter patent known is dated April 3, 1449. It was granted to John of Utynam for his art of making colored glass.
Re:Amazon (Score:4, Informative)
FFFII has the real story [ffii.org]. Nice Quotes from HÃ¥kon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Inc, Richard Clark, CEO of Elysium Co Ldt and chief editor for the JPEG standardisation committee, Bernd Runge of SAP AG, Bernhard Kaindl of SuSE GmbH, Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz, professor of Public Law and European Law, Aoyama Gakuin Daigaku, Tokyo, Jozef Halbersztadt, patent examiner at the Polish Patent Office and others.
Re:Who is responsible for ? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story
McCarthy about GPL: "which moreover is not "free", but is actually a different form of monopoly by imposing a copyright licence system on users."
More general information from FFII:
http://swpat.ffii.org/akteure/mccarthy/ind
Re:No - there is NOTHING sane about this! (Score:3, Informative)
there is more MEP info here [europarl.org.uk] for people in the UK, and search the same website for rest of europe. i cant believe this proposal passed parliament...
McCarthy won on all points (Score:3, Informative)
* From: Hartmut Pilch <phm@xxxxxx>
* To: news@xxxxxxxx, <patents@xxxxxxxx>
* Subject: McCarthy wins in JURI
* Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 13:04:55 +0200 (CEST)
The JURI vote was delayed by 2 hours. Our little conference was thereby made impossible. Around 13.00 the voting was pushed through in 20 minutes, and McCarthy won a majority on all points, which means
- introduction of program claims
- refusal of interoperability privilege (ITRE 15)
- refusal of definition of "technical"
- what is new needn't be technical and what is technical needn't be new
- no need for a technical solution, only problem must be technical
- additional rationales for patentability (e.g. need to make money from licensing in view of low-cost economies)
etc.
McCarthy was subsequently surrounded by congratulating journalists and explained them that she only wanted to harmonise the status quo, wasn't legalising software patents, was against US-style patenting of algorithms and business methods, would not hurt opensource software etc. Some of these journalists also had a chance to meet Erik and Alex who watched the session.
A collection of statements and documentation about the JURI vote is found at
http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/juri0617/ [ffii.org]
--
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation http://swpat.ffii.org/
145,000 votes 400 firms against software patents http://noepatents.org/
UK also thinks it's a bad idea (Score:3, Informative)
Phillip.