Letter To Abolish Software Patents In Australia 166
Ben Sturmfels writes "Over 500 members of the Australian software industry have have signed an open letter urging their government to abolish software patents. Signatories include free software luminaries Andrew Tridgell and Jonathan Oxer. In 2008 the Australian government began a Review of Patentable Subject Matter. While we missed the 2009 public consultation period, we hope to influence the government's response to the Review, due in February 2011. The letter will be presented to Minister Kim Carr in early August."
Re:I don't understand this.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know the Australian rationale but I wonder when Americans discuss the need for patents and copyrights. Why do content creators want to abolish patents? America is rich today because of patents and copyrights. If every second guy could rip off a great idea, we'd have nothing left to offer. We cannot compete on prices. The innovation and creativity of Americans is what has made US powerful...
That's funny. I always though one of the reasons that America was rich today was because when they were developing, they did not respect patents and copyrights, specifically foreign copyrights, such as books from Europe. They just copied and reproduced the content they wanted at will. Oh, and slaves. You can get rich pretty easily when you don't have to pay for the stuff you need/want.
Re:I don't understand this.. (Score:2, Insightful)
There are lots of ways to protect ideas aside from copyright and especially patents (such as trade secrets, and natural monopolies). Having patent lawyers is not always a justifiable cost, but necessary to defend against other companies patent lawyers but in some cases all sides might benefit from laws preventing patents in their areas (especially smaller companies). This might not hold true for all areas/industries though.
"Members"? (Score:4, Insightful)
The names of 500 (in all likelihood) nobodies on a petition with the sweeping goal of abolishing software patents?
Dead before it starts.
Man, even the petition page looks amateurish. Sorry to be so negative, but there's no chance of success here.
Re:I don't understand this.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It will be interesting to see if the Australian government leans towards the U.S. model (with the U.S./Australian Free Trade Agreement) or New Zealand no-software patents model (with the Closer Economic Relations agreements between the countries). I suspect that mainly hinges on who wins the upcoming Australian election.
Re:I don't understand this.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of the business ethos of those who were made rich and powerful with American innovation and creativity. Much of which came from public sources such as American universities and the NASA program which are now under funded so those same businessmen can get taxpayer money to pay for their mistakes.
They aren't thinking beyond the next quarter, screw the future if there is profit to be made now.
Re:I don't understand this.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Has anyone ever... (Score:1, Insightful)
Just wondering. I'm sure there must be someone.
Simply put Politics, and Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly you need to understand that there is a limit to how far the rest of the world will protect US Copyrights and Patents and that limit is "until there's nothing in it for them". At the moment the US's only big incentive is access to their markets and free trade agreements, this doesn't always work. You can already see the effects of this in Africa where the Pharma industry has had to make big concessions to stop African governments simply ignoring their patents, you can't trade if you're dead. A more interesting example is Asia where you have rampant piracy. The reason why the US has to turn a blind eye here is simply that they NEED Asia for cheap goods for their own economy. You need to be reasonable about IP or it really will become imaginary, this game only works as long as everyone follows the rules. If it gets too biased in your favour, then they simply won't play.
Secondly you need to look at why software patents are different. There are two big problems that software patents create here because of how different they are to normally patentable innovations. One of the big problems is because of the sheer speed of progress and time to market compared to pharma and physical inventions. Pharma innovations normally have a considerable time to market because of the testing they need to undergo, as a reward they get a monopoly for a few short years, whilst competitors are encouraged to find the alternatives which usually exist. Physical inventions likewise have the advantage of a large number of alternative ways of doing things. The problem with software and algorithms in particular is that quite often there isn't an alternative that allows you to perform the same task and maintain compatibility etc. And this is leaving aside the problem of ill-trained examiners, patently obvious subject matter and the problems of patent pools.
Re:"Members"? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are several problems with this letter. It suggests that only free software does not use patents, so it sets itself up for being labelled a typical anti-capitalist rant from long haired hippies who hate property in all its forms.
They should have noted that Microsoft Windows, Office, Excel, PowerPoint became world dominant without a single patent being filed. That there are clear economic studies that show that software patents cause innovation to stop (Bessen et al), that the original premise behind patents was to reduce competition, and that the only provable value in a patent (any patent) is the documentation of knowledge in return for that toxic temporary monopoly. The reason software patents fail so badly is that we don't need patents to explain how software technology works.
All patents are toxic to their industries but at least we can reconstruct steam engines using the patent archive. That cost 20 years of progress during the industrial revolution.
There is never going to be anyone who 100 years from now reconstructs how to build a multithreaded web server from the patent archive. This is the fraud, and that is the reason software patents must be killed.
Re:I don't understand this.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Patently Obvious... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe in case of trivial innovation but in case of difficult and expensive innovation it will reward the copier and punish the innovator. It will also discourage the investors from investing into innovators and encourage them to wait until some poor fool puts in all the work, invents a new technology, and then simply reverse engineer it and mass produce it, leaving him in the dust. Patents are a complex issue and I'm not necessarily in favor of the system as it is but it is funny to read all the naive posts here from people who fail to see both sides of equation.
Re:I don't understand this.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're confusing copyright and patents.
By having software patents and effectively an innovation tax on an innovation process that very much builds on what came before it actually makes development more expensive in countries with software patents than without.
The software patent situation in the USA has degraded to the point where companies exist to effectively tax those that innovate in software without doing any innovation themselves. It's uncompetitive compared to those countries without the software patent tax.
Re:I don't understand this.. (Score:1, Insightful)
So. Let me get this straight. Your story is, America got rich because it copied some books from England back in the 1800s? You're serious, right?
Copying books meant the US had cheap, widely available education. It isn't the only factor, but would you seriously suggest that the ability to copy books and machinery designs legally would not enrich a nation? Ignoring foreign IP rights will benefit any country so long as it is a net importer of IP.
Re:I don't understand this.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Patently Obvious... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe in case of trivial innovation but in case of difficult and expensive innovation it will reward the copier and punish the innovator.
No punishment involved, just additional value to society. Copying increases net value because things don't have to be reinvented.
The innovator still has first mover advantage and there are very few software advances, if any, that are of a sufficiently large quantum to justify any reward larger than that. Software is soft and it changes gradually. No protection is needed for big investments in big advancement because there aren't any. There are big investments in developing big software packages but that's not the same thing and is covered by copyright in any case.
Patents are a complex issue and I'm not necessarily in favor of the system as it is but it is funny to read all the naive posts here from people who fail to see both sides of equation.
Both sides? The onus is on every patent proponent, not patent opponent, to justify at every step this massive interference in the citizen's business by the government. The default position that patents have value in every possible technical area is bogus.
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It's valuable because it's standard, not standard because it is valuable.