Protests Delay European Software Patent Vote 316
vinsci writes "According to CNET News, 'The European Parliament has delayed voting on a controversial software-patents directive, following protests and criticism by computer scientists and economists.' ZDNet UK adds: 'Warnings that a controversial directive could devastate European software businesses have struck a chord with MEPs. The European Parliament has delayed voting on a controversial software-patents directive... the vote, originally planned for Monday, will now take place at a plenary session starting on 22 September.' Wired also has a story on the protests."
Re:The US will put massive pressure on MEPs (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good for Europe (Score:2, Informative)
Business-method patents are not the issue here.
Re:The US will put massive pressure on MEPs (Score:3, Informative)
In the same sense, the world is not free of software patents. Some countries in the world have software patents, some other countries don't. There is no standard policy on software patents throughout the world.
Continuing this example, some EU countries have allowed software patents, some haven't. "Europe" or "EU" has had no directive concerning patenting software. It has been up to the member countries.
I think you could compare it to a situation where patents would have been granted in individual states of the USA. Some would have allowed software patents and some other states wouldn't. And then the Congress were to decide on a Federal law overriding all the local laws.
Re:second time it is postponed (Score:5, Informative)
No it is the SEVENTH time it has been postponed:
EU Software Patent Plans Shelved Amid Massive Demonstrations [ffii.org]
This will continue until protesting dies down through constant delays and divide and conquer tactics. It is very hard to win at a game that is never played wheneven the opposition has a chance of losing.
But big business likes them... (Score:1, Informative)
I would presume that a lot of the software patents are like WMDs - never expected to actually be used but the threat of 'you attack us, we can hit you with patents X,Y,Z' (and legal costs!).
What is important, is that they act as a defense against any form of attack from a company involved in software development. Acme tries to sue IBM over a electronics patent, IBM threatens or actively counterattacks with software patents.
But how long before you get companies that only own software patents, but dont develop software. That way they can attack without needing to defend!
Actually, here's how it is: (Score:5, Informative)
The vote has been delayed because the original proposal was not appropriate (everyone hated it). The original proposal was created with a very slim majoriy vote from the JURI committee (65 MEPs).
Having talked to many MEPs, I've heard that they know it's a crap proposal, but they don't know what to do to fix it. So I, along with many others, have been studying the European Patent Convention, the WTOs TRIPS agreement, and the proposal. We've been educating our MEPs, and now they don't want software patents.
The MEPs on the JURI committed are much more educated this time around, they are considering the FFII mini-proposal, almost all of them want to make sure that software is explicitly excluded from patentability.
Cosmetic changes won't fool anyone, the level of education among the EU lobbyists is quite impressive. I think we're going to win this one.
Ciaran O'Riordan
My MEP is all for it...and apparently full of it! (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you for your correspondence concerning the draft directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
The European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee has voted on the rapporteur's report on the directive and there will be continuing debate and further democratic scrutiny before the directive becomes law.
At this early stage of legislative process, it is nonetheless important to establish the facts about what the draft EU directive and what the Parliament's rapporteur are aiming to achieve in the amendments tabled to the Commission proposal.
It has been suggested that the Parliament's report will for the first time allow the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. This is simply not true. The patenting of computer-implemented inventions is not a new phenomenon. Patents involving the use of software have been applied for and granted since the earliest days of the European Patent Office (EPO). Out of over 110,000 applications received at the EPO in 2001, 16,000 will have dealt with inventions in computer-implemented technologies. Indeed, even without an EU directive, these patents will continue to be filed, not only to the EPO but also to national patent offices.
As you will be aware, in the US and increasingly in Japan, patents have been granted for what is essentially pure software. Some EPO and national court rulings indicate that Europe may be drifting towards extending the scope of patentability to inventions which would traditionally have not been patentable, as well as pure business methods. It is clear that Europe needs a uniform legal approach which draws a line between what can and cannot be patented, and prevents the drift towards the patentability of software per se.
The rapporteur's intention is clear in the amendments tabled and in a new Article 4 in the text, to preclude; the patentability of software as such; the patentability of business methods; algorithms; and mathematical methods. Article 4 clearly states that in order to be patentable, a computer-implemented invention must be susceptible to industrial applications, be new, and involve an inventive step. Moreover the rapporteur has added a requirement for a technical contribution in order to ensure that the mere use of a computer does not lead to a patent being granted.
Furthermore, the amended directive contains new provisions on decompilation that will assist software developers. While it is not possible to comment on whether any patent application would be excluded from the directive, the directive, as amended, would not permit the patentability of Amazon's 'one-click' method. As far as software itself is concerned, it will not be possible to patent a software product. Software itself will continue to be able to be protected by copyright.
With an EU directive, legislators will have scrutiny over the EPO and national court's decisions. With, in addition, the possibility of having a definitive ruling from the European Court in Luxembourg, thus ensuring a restrictive interpretation of the EU directive and a greater degree of legal certainty in the field of patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
Some concerns have been raised that the directive may have an adverse effect on the development of open source software and small software developers. The rapporteur supports the development of open source software and welcome the fact that the major open source companies are recording a 50% growth in world-wide shipment of its products.
In the amended proposal, the rapporteur has imposed a requirement on the Commission to monitor the impact of the directive, in particular its effect on small and medium sized enterprises, and to look at any potential difficulties in respect of the relationship between patent protection of computer-implemented inventions and copyright protection.
Many small companies have given their support to this directive, which will give them more legal certainty as it offers the possibility of pro
My Letter to MEPs (Score:5, Informative)
It's available here. [compsoc.com]
Ciaran O'Riordan
Size of protests in Europe (Score:3, Informative)
In Europe one regularly sees hundred of thousands of protesters in the street for seemignly benign things from a distance, such as a change in education policy. For really important matters one can see millions of people, who are very hard to ignore. Ministers have been known to resign after a large enough protest.
However in the US the situation is the same. Doesn't anyone remember the enormous protests, marches and so one of the 60's?
Re:My MEP is all for it...and apparently full of i (Score:2, Informative)
Clearly Arlene McCarthy's office has sent a draft response for all UK Labour MEPs to use.
Re:Yay for Europe! (Score:3, Informative)
Are you talking about the TV news or the printed media exclusively?
I'd say Fox news and CNN are about as biased as you can get in TV news. British tabloid newspapers have been biased for a long while, but there's a common element - Rupert Murdoch owns Fox, and holds a major stake in the UK's satellite station BSkyB, and terrestrial station Channel5. He also owns a number of tabloid papers in the UK, and is a supporter of the Bush regime, as he was a supporter of Reagan, and Bush Senior. I think you'll also find his media companies behind the most vociferous articles about Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretions, and the Whitewater scandal. When one man controls the majority of the news we see in the papers or on TV, he wields a hell of a lot of power over world politics.
"You can't change the world
But you can change the facts
And when you change the facts
You change points of view
If you change points of view
You may change a vote
And when you change a vote
You may change the world."
- Depeche Mode "New Dress"
Re:My MEP is all for it...and apparently full of i (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't want to read that much, the bottom line is this: Allvoice managed to squeeze money out of IBM and a division of the then still dying Lernout&Hauspie, with it's patent on an interface between speech recognition software and word processors (allowing you to correct mistakes made by the speech recognition software).
Nice detail those Labour MEPs (read: McCarthy sock puppets, as they're just sending our her standard letter) leave out: both of those lawsuits were filed in the US and won based on US software patents held by Allsoft. They hold similar patents in Europe, but here they aren't enforceable yet (as software patents are still illegal here for the time being). In fact, should we have had software patents in Europe, IBM would probably have countersued faster than you can say "screwed" for infringement on one of the thousands of software patents it owns.
So not having software patents in Europe is a strategic advantage to European companies: as long as they don't sell their software in the US, they can obtain and enforce software patents in US against US companies without fearing to be countersued. I.e., they can play leech in the US...
Patentability of hardware not understood (Score:2, Informative)
Without patents, inventions are public goods. A businessman puts up money for research, but without patents the invention belongs to everyone, so the businessman cannot get a return on his investment. He doesn't repeat his mistake - result: lack of money for research.
Pay attention, this is where it gets difficult. The number of owners is a number. How big does that number have to be before the businessman finds that he cannot get a return on investment?
I reckon no more than a dozen. If a product is covered by more than a dozen different companies' patent portfolios, it is a write-off. The holders of the junk patents will leach the return from those who made the investment to come up with the key inventions.
So the patent system, even for hardware, only rewards business for successful research if the threshold for inventiveness is so high that few, preferably only one, patents cover each sellable product. Much work is needed to reform the current system for hardware.
Software comes in packages and suites. Even a single program is created by a linker, linking many object files. It is unrealistic to imagine a patent system that will reward businessmen for investing in research in computer software.
Notice that the patents system does force companies to have research departments, so that they can build up defensive patent portfolios. But the vision behind the patent system is that it rewards success. The license fees go to the company that finds a filament for an electric ligth bulb, or a way to transmit sound by electricity. That is the central point. Rather than having government funded research that consumes lots of money but never comes up with anything much, you privatise research, via the patents system, and those who don't come up with anything important lose their investment. But the way the system works today is based on quantity not quality. Companies build defense patent portfolios on the basis that they can use them to tie rivals up in court. The patent system in practise is a frictional cost, not an incentive system. Why throw grit into the wheels of the software industry?
Re:My MEP is all for it...and apparently full of i (Score:1, Informative)
MEP cotact details (Score:3, Informative)
Listing of MEPs by country:
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep5/owa/p_meps2.repa
Please try to be as informative as possible. Many MEPs have said that they have been inundated with post and emails about this topic. What they want to hear is how they can fix the proposal, so mail them amendments and ask them to adopt existing amendments that are helpful to us. Portuguese MEP Jose Ribeiro E Castro has tabled the FFII mini-proposal, this is a great one for MEPs to adopt.
Ciaran O'Riordan