EU Closer To Rejecting Software Patents 213
niekko writes "BusinessWeek is reporting on the hot subject of European software patent directive. 'The European Parliament moved Tuesday toward rejecting a proposed law creating a single way of patenting software across the European Union, officials said -- a move that would effectively kill the legislation since lawmakers do not plan to set forth a new version.'"
Good luck to all you Europeans... (Score:3, Insightful)
Our prayers go with you.
Re:Good luck to all you Europeans... (Score:3, Insightful)
Judging from what i've seen on Slashdot, the people -- even the ones that think they know everything about software -- aren't any smarter in this respect, either...
Haven' t we heard this before? (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought this was the 2nd or 3rd time that software patent directive has come up. How do anyone know that there won't be another version for us to talk about months from now?
Killing this directive is dangerous. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the directive doesn't pass, they can still lobby individual governments.
If the directive passes in castrated form with provisions preventing pure software and business method patents, member countries won't be able to enact legislation permitting it.
So, what we, Europeans, really want is for the directive to pass in a form that once and for all prevents this abomination called software patents to be reborn.
Robert
Give it time... (Score:4, Insightful)
The EU is still new. They have members voting on ideals, and what is best for the people. That will change.
The USA is forcing its' system of government everywhere in the world. Soon, the "people" will elect thier new representatives. And the rich and wealthy businessmen will use their money to advertise candidates who are most favorable to their interests.
As long as money = speech, the people are the ones who will keep getting screwed.
As soon as money is taken out of politics, then people can debate which policy best fits their needs. But as long as 7 million dollars is spent on advterising about how the candidate is an asshole or fear, we are screwed. Can anyone in the USA honestly believe the pharmasutical companies advertising that drugs in Canada are dangerous for consumption in the USA? All the pharmasutical companies want to do is sell the exact same drugs in the USA at much higher prices. But when it comes to politics, there is no requirement that the truth is told.
What will happen in the EU is the powerful and rich will get people into positions of power. It is like the MAFIA. For a long run, they worked the system. They took low level thugs and got them jobs in the police force. They paid for the education of lawyers, and got some elected as judges. Before you knew it, the MAFIA could sell drugs, even if there was a police officer watching. If some good and ethical cop arrested someone the MAFIA wanted to protect, there was a good chance they would get a judge which would throw out the charges.
That is what the rich are doing. They are buying political offices. This will destroy the world, most will be forced in factories, into a slave like exsistance.
Re:Killing this directive is dangerous. (Score:5, Insightful)
The pro-swpat people actually claim this is only for "harmonisation" of the current system. In a sense they have a point: I think one of the positive outcomes of no directive could be that even between two regimes that allow software patents enforcing them might be somewhat difficult.
Of course a good directive would still be much better than this. But we'll wait and see the result tomorrow.
Re:Good luck to all you Europeans... (Score:3, Insightful)
A hounding from the Well-Connected at 4AM CET. (Score:2, Insightful)
If this is rejected then I have a paraphrase from Star Wars Eposode IV: "Don't underestimate the lobbyists, they'll be back and in greater numbers"
Is this a good or a bad thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
So MEPs, try harder!
Tristan.
Wait! The headline is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Software patents do exist in Europe and the only way to make them invalid is a directive that effectively excludes software from patentability. So the rejection of the proposed (pro-softpat) text does not really solve the problem.
Re:Killing this directive is dangerous. (Score:3, Insightful)
One is reminded of the infamous USAG John Ashcroft
quote "In 1000 attempted terrorist attacks, we
must be right 100% of the time. The terrorists
need only be correct once."
Defeating the EU software patent this time is
important, as it must be every time such a bill
reaches the EU ministers. The monopolistic
corporations that sponser such bills need only
be successful once (, and then it passes). The
price of freedom is eternal vigilance!
Re:pfffft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A hounding from the Well-Connected at 4AM CET. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wait a minute, is this bill good? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is. The trouble is that the pro-SW patent lobbyist claim to not want SW patents, as saying they want them would make their position hopeless. The major proponents have been linked time after time with organisations that have _no_ interest outside software or business method patents.
So instead they claim they dont want software patents, then turn around and lobby against any changes that would ban software patents. If, at any time, they're confronted on this inconsistency they ignore, avoid the question or divert the subject.
"Can someone tell me if I'm missing something?"
Indeed, yes, you are.
"If so, maybe it is time to say that this measure is okay."
And there you have the reason. The exact target response the obfuscation is intended to create.
It's hard to tell the difference, even for people who've followed the debate for years on end, so it's no wonder that people fall for it.
Re:Give it time... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a long history of the rich taking as much as the poor will tolerate. For a while, the USA had factories filled with children working 60 hour weeks, for slave wages. It took an act of Congress to shut down these factories, and only because of massive outrage.
Look at what Bush just did, last year. He did away with many provisions of the overtime law. No longer is a worker garunteed overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours in one week.
And what about companies that require a personality test, or iq test, or credit check for a job, even a job as a janitor.
What about companies like GM that laid off 35,000 people and moved factories to Mexico? Does anyone remember the NAFTA debates of the 1980's? NAFTA was supposed to increase jobs in the USA, to increase pay in the USA, by making trucking between the USA and Mexico easier. Instead, all NAFTA did was take jobs that paid $25 an hour and move them to a place where the same job pays $1.50 an hour. It is not like we are doing Mexico any favors, or giving them good jobs.
Smart people believe their gifts, their intellect entitles them to riches more than anyone else. And not just double or triple, but on a scale where there is no comparison. How much does a business leader, who makes $10,000,000 a year care if the price of gasoline goes from $2 a gallon to $3 a gallon? Yet, for many families, this can create problems.
I'll give you one other example. Property taxes. Say I work for 20 years, and I save up enough money to pay for my modest house, I don't owe anyone anything. I want to retire, I have a very small income, I want to grow food in the backyard. I am pretty good at that, and I like organic foods. One day I get in the mail a $1000 property tax bill. Government is saying they will throw me off my land. Property tax forces the poor to keep working, it is a slavery like force.
The whole system is designed to force people to work.
Re:Give it time... (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree that the truth isn't being told about the pharmaceutical industry to the public. The thing is that they have tried telling the story in the past and the public doesn't want to listen. The US has some of the strictest drug testing policies in the world. Due to these policies it's very expensive to get a drug approved for use in the US. In response to this the pharmaceuticals charge US citizens the lions share of the research cost.
Other countries have far less constricting rules, and those countries get meds that can't be sold in the US and aren't forced to pay for US require research.
So what does buying drugs cheaper from Canada do? Well the net result should be that the US will inflate the cost of drugs for the entire world. The pharmaceuticals will be forced to start charging higher prices to the rest of the world to certify drugs in the US. Certifying drugs for use in the US will become an expensive and unneccessary task that most companies will pobably stop bothering to do.
Certainly there are problems with the pharmaceutical industry, but allowing US citizens to purchase drugs from countries more lenient is probably not the solution.
Before I get modded horribly off-topic...
The point is that sometimes there's not just the simple answer that it must be the rich trying to make themselves richer. Sometimes it really is people trying to do the right thing.
In this case, there's a good deal of people involved that want software patents in the EU because they just want to get richer. There's also bound to be those out there that are passionate that "intellectual property" should be strongly protected. There's a lot of people who see the abuses of the USPTO system as a good thing, morally and financially. Obviously we disagree, but it's hardly justification to paint them all as soulless overlords conspiring to commit crimes against humanity.
about software patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Dear MEP,
As you are probably well aware, soon the EU parliament will have a 'second reading' of the directive for allowing patents on "computer implemented inventions", which, as I will show below, actually amount to allowing software patents (swpat), though this is heavily disputed and denied by the proponents of the directive, including the European Commission (EC).
The way in which this directive has gone through the EU Council of ministers is mind boggling and shows exactly how much the EU has a democratic deficit. Despite the fact there was no real majority for the draft any more (the change in vote-weight after the enlargement alone accomplished that, apart from a lot of change of minds of some other countries), despite the fact that stringent motions of national parliaments were passed to oblige the national ministers to redraw the proposal as an A-item so that it may be further discussed, despite the fact that the EU parliament and their JURY-commission asked for a new first (re)reading with almost unanimity, the EC chose to ignore and disregard all this, while giving no explanation, apart from "for institutional reasons as to not create a precedent". In other words, the "common position" had to be followed, even though there was no common position any more, because, apparently, the form is more important then the facts.
This is a stupefying prime example of absurd bureaucratic reasoning and mentality; to give more importance to formality, and to place appearances before the changing facts. Bureaucracy abhors changes, even to the detriment of real democratic values. But then again, maybe this shouldn't surprise us, as the EC is exactly that: bureaucrats, whom were never voted into the position they occupy, yet create laws that could potentially influence millions of EU citizens (to which they do not have to answer to). The EU constitution leaves this democratic deficit as it is, alas. And as seen by the handling of this directive, the deficit is pretty huge.[1]
I will not go further into the procedural mess and the apparent disrespect of the EC for the EU parliament, but rather concentrate on the different aspects of the directive itself (content). I will do this by stating, and then debunking, the rather dubious claims and arguments made by the pro-directive camp, which, alas, also include some misguided MEPs - though I haste myself to say the large majority of the EU parliament is well aware of the facts, as can be readily seen by the amendments made in the first reading.
The following statements for why it is necessary to have the (current) directive is as follows:
1)It is necessary for the stimulation and development of new software, so that IT-companies can be innovative to the fullest of their potential.
2)It is necessary for the stimulation of EU software business, so we can effectively compete on the world-market.
3)It is needed for the harmonisation of the internal market, and to retain the status quo. (Similar as the "we do not change the current practise" or the "it will avoid drifting towards US-style patentability" -argument).
I will now debunk all these arguments (sources mentioned at the end of the document) in a rational and clear way, instead of all the FUD currently being made by many of the softwarepatents (swpat) proponents.
1)It is necessary for the stimulation and development of new software, so that IT-companies can be innovative to the fullest of their potential.
First of all, we have to ask ourselves, what, exactly, a patent is. A lot of pro-swpat advocates use terms as Intellectual Property (IP) rights, while those encompass a lot of different concepts, such as copyright (which is already used for software). We can find the following definition:
A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time (normally 20 years from the filing date)... Per the word'
Re:Give it time... (Score:4, Insightful)
I dunno. The impression I've gotten from watching this EU software patents thing play out over the past year or so is that it's already happened.
The EU MPs vote on ideals. Sometimes. When their arms are twisted. Then the EC blatantly ignores them. Also, every once and a while the MPs will vote to explicitly cede a little more power to the EC.
The checks on the EC's power are diminishing with time, and it's the EC that's already stuffed with folks beholden to business interests.
However, except to the extent that US businesses are involved, I don't think it's fair to blame the US for this. The US didn't determine the structure of the EU, and issues of corruption are universal. The US could drop off the face of the earth, tomorrow, and your analysis of the weaknesses of representative democracy in the media age would still hold.
But ... nor do I think it is appropriate to blame representative democracy per se; elected MPs have been the sole (if inconsistent) hedge against the unelected EC which has been trying to repeatedly hammer through software patents. The biggest failings of the EU government to serve the needs of its people (versus businses) appear to be in its least representative-democratic portions.
Out of curiousity, if it were up to you alone, what system of government would you choose for Europe?
Re:Good luck to all you Europeans... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then it shouldn't be granted a patent; one of the requirements is non-obviousness. This is why things like Amazon's "one click" patent are so frowned upon; they should never have been granted in the first place.
Erm... yes. That's the point. If you put in the time and money for the R&D, then the patent system is supposed to grant you a major competitive advantage (a short term monopoly) so that you can take advantage of your invention. If it's good enough that people want it straight away, they'll pay your price; if it's not, they can wait a while until the patent expires, and you won't make any money. Hence you have to charge a reasonable price.
The problem, once again, isn't the principle of patents per se, it's that the period for which the monopoly is granted is excessive in a business as fast-moving as IT (and indeed several others). It doesn't take a decade to capitalise on a great technology idea in this day and age, it takes months.
Ford can't patent tyres; another requirement for granting a patent is the lack of "prior art", i.e., that no-one else has done it before.
The answer to your tyre example, once again, is that Ford shouldn't be granted the patent for a change that is "simple and easy". And if Ford really do invest a large amount of time and money to develop a safer tyre, the patent scheme is there precisely to stop some rip-off merchant cloning the thing cheaply, since he doesn't have to recoup his investment from the profits he makes in manufacturing.
What you're missing in saying that everyone should have access to those tyres at the cheap rate is that without the patent protection, they might never have been invented in the first place. The little guy certainly doesn't have the huge R&D resources Ford does, and if Ford doesn't see any competitive advantage from bringing its weight to bear on the problem, why would it do so?
Of course there are ethical dilemmas where the industry concerned makes products related to health and safety. This happens with pharma companies all the time when it comes to places like Africa, who couldn't possibly afford the going rate in the US or Europe. The solution to this is simply to charge a realistic rate everywhere, which might not be the same rate everywhere. But even in this case, again you have to remember that not many people would invest in pharamceuticals if there was no scope for a reasonable ROI, and patents are the guarantee that when significant discoveries are made, that ROI will be forthcoming. Without the catalyst, you risk losing the whole process.
In short, the principle of patents is fine. What's wrong is that they're routinely granted with inadequate checking for obviousness and prior art, they last too long for many industries, once an obvious patent is granted it can be absurdly difficult to get it thrown out, and the costs of patent lawsuits (like any other) are ludicrously prohibitive in some jurisdictions, meaning the little guy can't enforce his own patents, or defend against unjustified patent infringement claims by the big guy. Fix the system so it works properly, and the underlying principle is fine.
Re:Steady On (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if all you want to do is come up with ideas, and pay some lawyers, without actually making anything useful, then software patents are exactly what you want.
Not enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Killing this directive is dangerous. (Score:3, Insightful)
Any future harmonisation directive will then be even more difficult to pass, if it does not allow software patents.
So we want a good directive ASAP.
Re:It was rejected! (Score:1, Insightful)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/06/eu_bins_s