EU Moves Toward Software Patents 322
edooper writes "Apparently the patent discussion in Europe has taken a turn for the worse. According to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure: 'This Wednesday, the Irish Presidency managed to secure a qualified majority for a counter-proposal to the software patents directive, with only a few countries - including Belgium and Germany - showing resistance. This proposal discards all limiting amendments from the European Parliament and reinstates the laxist provisions from the Commission, adding direct patentability of data structures and process descriptions as icing on the cake. In a remarkable sign of unity in times of imminent elections, members of the European Parliament from all political groups are condemning this blatant disrespect for democracy in Europe.' Read more: swpat.ffii.org."
How would this work? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll probably get modded down for this but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Example: I am a coder for a steel mill that has figured out an algorithm that reduces the amount of energy used in the reduction of steel(which takes more energy than melting the steel). Now, after the steel company spends money on R&D to implement this, I defect to a rival steel company and implement the algorithm for them. Now the first steel company not only has lost it's competitive advantage, but they are actually further behind because they spent the money on R&D that the other mill did not.
Software patents can prevent this from happening. But like I stated at the start of the post, the current system in the US is broken, patents are too vague and there is not enough emphasis on prior art. It would be a shame if this were to happen in Europe. Hopefully, the EU and the US can learn from past mistakes and create a system that rewards innovation while not stifiling competetion.
Re:How would this work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Data structures (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently Microsoft has realized that copyright is not nearly as powerful as patents for clobbering open source. This sounds disasterous.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents on Software...uhoh (Score:2, Insightful)
We are better than you silly Yanks! (Score:2, Insightful)
Europe, here is a message. Don't go down this slippery road! It is nothing but trouble. Look at how us Yanks have screwed this one up.
Re:Ethics of Intellectual Property (Score:1, Insightful)
basically, from revolutionary france on up, IPR was reinstated within months as it became obvious that IPR was and is necessary. Sure, it's not perfect, especially often in implementation, but not having any IPR is pretty much as dumb as saying that there shouldnt be any municipal water supplies.
Actually, I'm quite happy to see that you were (correcty) modded down as a troll. There's always a danger on slashdot of your kind of claptrap being modded as insightful.
Web Protests (Score:3, Insightful)
...it's OK....we can still blame MS (Score:5, Insightful)
"The Irish Presidency explains on its website that it is sponsored by Microsoft. Ireland is "the largest software-exporting country in Europe", thanks to a fiscal policy which makes it a tax haven for large US companies: it has a tax rate on patent revenues of 0%."
So it would appear that US corporations are subverting international processes for their own benefit. This is exactly the same as the Australia-US situation, where compliance with draconian US IP laws HAVE BEEN MADE A CONDITION of the US entering into a Free Trade Agreement.
I'm struggling to cope with this though: the Irish stuff up IP laws in EU - but they make Guinness...Don't make me choose!!!!!....
Re:Patents on Software...uhoh (Score:2, Insightful)
Permanent is what they shall be if certain entities with lots of money can influence certain law-making entities.
Re:I'll probably get modded down for this but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I happen to think you raise a very good point here. After all, patents are in essence a tool, just as hammers are. We all know it would be a stupid idea to outlaw hammers simply because they can be misused for the purpose of breaking and entering people's homes by smashing windows. After all, hammers have MANY other uses.
However, the crucial question boils down to this: do the number of beneficial uses outweigh the number of abuses possible? In the case of software patents, I'm not so sure the benefits outweigh the abuses.
I also think in the case of your steel mill example is one that might better be served by trade-secret than by a patent.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Re:It saved Apple! (Score:3, Insightful)
What will be patented? (Score:5, Insightful)
Will us European programmers suddenly need a license to implement quicksort and all of those other software patents that expired so long ago?
If so, the European software industry is fucked. Truly and royally fucked. It will kill it totally. There won't be one. Implementing software patents allowing this would be 100% counter-productive.
Now if the law is only for new applications, not for ones already existing
Why don't I believe that this will be the case. It'll just be a whole load of obvious patents for software and methods that have been done a thousand times before, albeit in a slightly different context - which somehow makes the new patent valid!
This is just another law to get a load of lawyers a load of money for submitting patents, whilst fucking over everybody else.
Fucking sickening.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't vote them then. Good luck convincing your neighbors though. Until the average voter understands these issues, nobody's going to look for tech savvy piliticos to nominate and elect into office. There's a lot of work ahead.
Re:How would this work? (Score:1, Insightful)
The really important point to carry away from all of this is how people inside the EU who know just how bad this is and have told everybody so are being ignored. It's a sign of things to come. People in the EU don't have rights anymore. When it comes to little piddly shit, maybe the serfs will be allowed to have their way, but for the major decisions, the people of the EU are nothing more than servants of the EU aristocracy.
Data Structures? I patent the vector! (Score:2, Insightful)
A typical example of a vector quantity is three dimensional velocity,
V = vi + vj + vk
Where vi,j,k represent change in position with respect to time in the i,j and k directions. It can be represented by a matrix of three real numbers of any number of bits as a representation.
All numerical simulations will benefit from my new invention, the vector. How else could anyone resolve and balance forces, areas, the flow of heat, particles and fluids without vectors? I am the new king of numerical calculation and all owe me tribute.
NOT. I hope anyone reading this understands that a patent on a data structure is absurd. Data structures are neither inventions or unique. They are necessary constructs, dictated by the nature of the problem being solved. They are all implicit in the construct of data types themselves. To claim that a data structure is an invention worthy of patent makes about as much sense as claiming two bricks stacked together is an invention.
Re:Ethics of Intellectual Property (Score:2, Insightful)
At what cost? We've seen what happens when electric utilities got privatized. Our good friend Dennis Kucinich can inform you what happened (in ohio at least). There's nothing wrong with people using their collective power (through gov't if necessay) to operate and control these things. If they stay on the ball, they can assure that everything will run smoothly. If they privatize, they lose that control. Cable TV is a good example. The corruptability of a gov't office soley depends on how far the voters let it go. So far, they have been asleep at the wheel on this one.
Cut the xenophobic crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the real world, where companies and countries have to compete against one another in business, not recognising software patents in the EU whilst they are being handed out like hot cakes in the US is the quickest way to destroy software development within the EU. I don't like it - in fact, I hate it - but those are the reasons behind it.
So, before you start EU-bashing, on software patents and rights in general (perhaps you should check out the EU Human Rights Act as well) perhaps you should learn to appreciate that it's only following the rather poor precedent set by the US.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Newsflash #2: It is the Council of Ministers that is pushing this decision through. Guess what that is? The EU member governments elected by the people on national level.
Look, I don't mean to come down too hard and I agree we have a problem here, but I just wish people who posted had some knowledge of the area instead of just guessing wildly.
Maybe it can be argued that the EU is not democratic. But that is more of a reflection on "representative democracy" as a concept, than the EU in particular.
Re:I'll probably get modded down for this but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents are not there to give the inventor a monopoly on what they invent. If that were the case, patents wouldn't bother with expiry dates. The original principle of patents was to give small inventors an opportunity to sell their invention - that is, if someone comes up with a brilliant new widget a large company could get his invention to market much quicker than the inventor can. The inventor can't hide their invention away - they have to go out and advertise it to venture capitalists and potential backers so that they can raise funds to bring it to market. A patent was there to let the inventor publish their invention and have a monopoly on it long enough to get to market and become established.
That's certainly not the way patents work these days - especially with the various extensions, and other cunning techniques (constantly revising a patent to keep it in the works for as long as possible) used to extend the length of patents. Furthermore, with business method and software patents you can now patent general broad ideas and algorithms of how to do things. Once things get that broad there are problems.
In the current world of patents R&D is discouraged, not encouraged. Why should a smaller steel mill put in any research into anything? Odds are the larger steel mill with the larger amount of cash to throw into R&D and patents will manage to patent (through broad patents) pretty much anything you might happen to invent. All they have to do is keep a vague eye on your R&D department then crash research and patent anything you're workign on. To spend 4 years on research only to find the larger mill has just patented something sufficently close to your idea to block it - well, that's a waste of money. You're better off not bothering and just licensing whatever new stuff the bigger mill comes up with.
The real question you should be asking is "Why should a steel mill invest in R&D?". The answer is, because they can make better products more efficiently if they do. That should be reason and incentive enough.
Jedidiah.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for helping in my point.
So here you have one organization (EU) where its members *ARE* elected by the people and are therefore held accountable... and they don't seem to want to be representative and/or democratic.
Therefore, what makes anyone think that another organization (UN) where its members *ARE NOT* elected (aka accountable) by the people will be democratic?
Therefore, neither the EU or the UN should be in charge of anything where we actually want things to be representative of the people.
I hope the software patent issue dies in the EU, just as I hope the UN fails in its grab for control over ICANN.
It is not MS vs. Linux, it is Patents vs. Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
They will not *sue* end users, they will go after developers. Patents ensure that Windows will remain the defecto OS for at least out lifetimes. In computer terms, an eternity.
Personally, I would at least hope they would allow math patents. Afterall, most software patents are just ideas stolen from the math world. Too bad "law" makers are too stupid to realize this.
Re:How would this work? (Score:2, Insightful)
Better be, 'cause competition won't be an option anymore.
Re:I'll probably get modded down for this but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Discovering an formula, which is what all algorithms boil down to, requires mental resources. How do you put a price on thought?
Thought has never been as overvalued as it is right now. If people don't come back to understanding real costs, things will get paid worse.
A programmer shuold not be paid more than a paramedic. Saving a life should be worth more. This is just one example where the system is askew. I maintain it is because of an overvaluing of thought and an undervaluing of action/physical.
Being smart is not everything. Acting, doing is.
The ultimate manifestation of this is the lawsuit company, what Baystar wants SCO to become. No practical output, just patents based on some kind of mental labour that has been overvalued.
Re:I'll probably get modded down for this but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine if after being treated by medical personel, you would have to pay them a portion of any money you made. If they hadn't saved you, there would be no means for your later productivity. Shouldn't you pay them royaltees? If not, why should this be done for "intellectual" property?
Re:It is not MS vs. Linux, it is Patents vs. Linux (Score:1, Insightful)
Quick someone tell the president to patent E=mc2, then we can rule the world!!!!!!!!!!
Patenting Data Structures?...... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is almost about "patenting" logic or problem solving skills. Anyone but a complete moron would come up with a similar solution for describing a customer.
When will this madness end?
Re:How would this work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we going to have leaders in each field analyze patent applications so that they can best judge whether an idea is so unique that it deserves a monopoly? Probably not, so who's going to judge?
Are we going to make the "decent amount of time" relative to the uniqueness of the idea? Probably not, so how long should it be?
Are we going to impose our patents on the rest of the world?
The logistics of this subjective patenting process calls into question its very purpose. I like the idea behind patents (no secrets), but unless they are held to enormously high standards, they will deteriorate into what they often are in the US: an ugly hindrance to progress.
--
Copyrights and Patents are optimization problems: maximize progress.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:1, Insightful)
Better to stop it now.
Re:Cut the xenophobic crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me, sir, but... what are you smoking ?
The Patent System is grossly abused in general, and particularly in the software area. It's widely acknowledged (check the economical studies available on the ffii site for example) that Software Patents doesn't increase inovation (and it's not particularly a difficult thing to understand). I won't be long here, suffice to say that programming is inherently an incremental work, based on top of others ideas, and moreover, it's one of the most complex creation that could be done (hell, it's so complex that we can't manage to produce 100% sure non-bugged software for any complex procedure). Pushing Software Patents is so deeply wrong that it would be funny if not real. How could you think a second that the patent system, with submarine patents, looooong submission delay, innovation-challenged patents, and incredibly inaccurate verification, could work in a field that would use dozens of theses "patents" without even realizing it, all that in a period not even sufficient to apply a patent ?
Why do the EU want theses ? it's totally insane. Not having patents is actually the BEST thing that could happens to the EU (and to all others countries). Plus, Software Patents aren't bringing added value at all, only $$$ for lawyers. Not one engineer read software patents (and for good reason -- not only because of the judicial risk).
The only reason I could imagine, sadly, is that some EU bureaucrats get big dollars by US companies. The fact that theses bureaucrats just choose to overrulle the European Commission is so incredible that my hope is it will create an enormous indignation (because, face it, the average EU citizen doesn't care about patents, but perhaps the beahvior shown by the bureaucrat (total irrespect to the elected representants) will trigger something).
Re:Cut the xenophobic crap... (Score:1, Insightful)
Interesting claim. Do you have some references or what do you base this on? (no, really, i'm not trying to be a prick. if you have them or, heck, even just some schoolboy logic to back that up, I'd love to read it)
Re:How would this work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be braindead and assume it's good.
I am form a new European Country, from Latvia. I have studiet the effect the software patents will make on our IT industry and let me tel you - it ain't pretty.
All European small and medium IT related companies would instantly go to the state of limbo: any large company from Europe or USA or Japan could just sue them with one of 30 000 overbroad software patents (progress bar, tabbet paletes, hyperlinks, selling on web, selling on web with credit card, GIF, JPEG, any-other-trivial-idea-expressed-in-layerspeak-in
As you see, software patents in Europe are only good for large non-European enterprises.
Why should we allow them in Europe then?
BAN THE SOFTWARE PATENTS IN YOU COUNTRY TOO!
Re:why do developers have to get screwed on this t (Score:5, Insightful)
OR
Software is literature. Literature is not patentable.
To protect your ideas, a simple copyright is enough. You do not need patents in software field.
Re:patently bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes they are, since they have same expiration times as other patents, yet software area moves a lot quicker.
By the time a regular patent expires, the idea(s) in it may still be perfectly usable for others to use, but by the time software patent expires, the technique has probably long since been obsolote, granting a monopoly on it for it's whole lifetime. An absolute maximum of five years from filing date might be a reasonable time for software patent, decades? Insane.
Re:I'll probably get modded down for this but... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) What is it we want to accomplish with it?
2) Is it actually accomplishing that today?
The first question is typically that you want to aid
Furthermore it should make it a good idea for me to share ideas with other people since I don't have to worry about them taking the idea and ripping me in the process.
Is the current patent system doing this? No, not really. It's far to expensive to apply for patents and protecting them for an individual or small company to do so successfully. Since there are so many incorrectly issued patents (which you still have to challenge in court at great cost if used against you) you are almost guaranteed to be breaking a few patents yourself amd thus under threat of litigation. (Which you can't fight since you don't have the economic capacity for it, even if you are right.)
So what we have in the current patent system is pretty much something which does the opposite of what it originally intended. At least as far as the "little guy" is concerned.
And patents are NOT tools. At least not in any useable way I see it. If you could use patents to make new things that would be true. As it is today it's more or less just "insurance" aginst future threats.
I agree with you that the benefits outweighing the problems is doubtful in the case of software patents. In fact, unless you happen to be a very larg corporation I doubt there are any benefits at all. (At least in Europe all small-medium developers have been extremely negative in the issue. Large corps are basically the only ones in favour.)
What might work (Score:3, Insightful)
As we can trust a politician never to know anything about what the consequences of their actions are (a broad overstatement, yes, but you get the idea), we can almost certainly count on that if this directive get's implemented, there will be no reasonable bounderies for what is patentable.
So what might work, is that the patentability is so ridiculesly absolute, that even the clueless guy down on the street takes notice and realises it's stupidity.
For instance, when his favorite netshop gauges prices 150% to pay patentfees.
For this to get banned, which is really what is needed (as big business will keep on pushing until they get it), things need to get really ugly first.
Lets just hope it doesn't stay ugly.
That does it, I'm now against the EU (again) (Score:2, Insightful)
Those of you who are EU-members: Do something! Show these people that you don't accept that your democratic rights gets flushed down the toilet!
puh...
Re:here we go again! (Score:4, Insightful)
No the European patent office started allowing software patents, this gives a legal basis for those patents.
"Secondly, the EU directive _actually reduces the degree of software patentability"
The Parliaments suggestions were valid and carefully thought through.
I've read ffii's comment's and they are valid too, the Commissions wording is full of holes.
If Pariament & People's comments didn't have validity then why seek to prevent those comments being expressed? Why not just argue your case to EU Parliament?
"Thirdly, it's been stated over and over again that there are 'multiple software business models' at work in Europe, and there's no specific reason to favour closed model approaches to open model approaches: they all work, and provide revenue and so on."
So? What has that to do with anything, the risk is that a monopoly player will be able to lock out competitors, the Parliament proposed a solution to this, the Commission didn't.
Whether that competition comes from closed or open source is irrelevant.
"Fourthly, in terms of 'software patents blocking open source',
Your comment pre-supposes that the directive represents the status quo and it certainly doesn't.
This *changes* the law, if it didn't there wouldn't be any point in having it! So whether patents *currently* affect MySql etc. or not is irrelevant.
"Fifthly, the EU always maintains more stricter examination than the US: business methods per se are _not_ patentable in the EU, and equally, flakey software patents have a harder time getting through. Stop transposing the failures of US into the EU."
Good, but the wording proposed by the Commission is fluffy. For example FFII comments on the "technology" issue are correct.
The Commissions wording does allow patents whose technology part is simply that they execute on a computer. Parliament's wording is tighter meaning that the invention has to represent improved technology.
Since any business process can be run on a computer, it allows business process patents simply by virtue of sloppy wording.
Parliament did a good job.
"Finally, the protests in Brussels are are a laugh: against multimillion dollar turnover businesses using patents and contributing to the wellbeing of the EU economy"
It's not in the interests of the European economy to allow a few patent holders to lock themselves into the their markets. Even if that patent holder is Nokia.
Being pro-competition isn't the same as being anti-business.
Re:Cut the xenophobic crap... (Score:3, Insightful)
Rubbish. European companies can (and do) get patents in the US, just as US companies get patents in Europe. The international environment is the same for every company.
What probably would happen, is that the market for software in a patent-free Europe would be more competitive than in a patent-encumbered USA, because software could be sold in Europe which could not be sold in the USA. Both US and European companies would probably participate in the more competitive European market. The people who'd benefit most would be European software consumers, i.e. all companies except software developers. More competition in the European region would lower their software costs.
Re:why do developers have to get screwed on this t (Score:1, Insightful)
So mathmatics and literature are patentable if "implemented in a practical and economically useful way", eg: a book? What utter bullshit!
Re:What he is smoking is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What he is smoking is... (Score:1, Insightful)
Your situation is not a valid justification for exporting the very large, and very real problems of software patents to the EU.
Do you really want it to be illegal for European companies to create products that interoperate with MS file formats? You think that is somehow going to level the playing field for EU companies?