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EU Software Patents Delayed Again
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Jan 24, 2005 05:02 AM
from the it's-like-a-time-loop dept.
from the it's-like-a-time-loop dept.
Lord An writes "It seems the decision about software patents in Europe has been delayed again for at least a week (link in German). Once again we have to thank Poland that the corresponding item was removed from the A-list of the Council of Agriculture and Fisheries. Hopefully this delay will be enough that the opposition vs. the patents will finally get the upper hand." Non-German speakers might find it useful to plug that URL into the Fish.
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What is wrong with software patents (Score:5, Insightful)
The European Union is attempting to pass a Directive that will force many European governments to permit patents on software despite growing protests from software engineers and small European software companies. Opponents fear that software patents will stifle innovation and competition in their industry, increasing their legal costs, while leaving them at the mercy of large companies who have the resources to acquire large numbers of patents. The Directive is supported by trade groups dominated by large multinational software companies, along with national patent offices who generate revenue from patent applications. A patent is a fearsome weapon, not only does it prevent someone from copying an invention, it also prevents them from independently inventing the same thing. This means that you could spend your entire life sitting in a cave, with no contact with the outside world, and anything you invent could still infringe other people's patents. In contrast, a copyright only prevents other people from copying your work. If you copyright a poem and someone else, by chance, happens to write the same poem without copying yours, then they are not infringing your copyright.
The purpose of patents, indeed all forms of intellectual property, is to promote the arts and sciences. Patents achieve this by granting an inventor exclusive control over their invention for a limited time. In return, the inventor is required to disclose their invention so that after the limited time expires, it is freely available to the rest of society. Society benefits when this provides an incentive for inventors to invent, where otherwise they might not have bothered.
A patent isn't just granted on an idea for an invention, it can only be granted once you have a prototype, or at least the ability to teach someone how to build a prototype, this is known as a "teachable invention". Patents therefore motivate an inventor to take their idea and invest the time and money to develop it into a teachable invention. In return for this, and a small fee, inventors are granted a 20 year monopoly over their invention.
This monopoly is not granted without a price. Every invention builds on those that came before, yet for the duration of a patent nobody else can build on a patented invention without the permission of the inventor. This creates a cost for society, and other inventors. Patents work when the benefit to society of having the invention outweighs the cost of the inventor's monopoly over it.
In a field such as pharmaceuticals, a vast investment may be required to get from an idea for a new drug, to the drug itself. In this case, it is easy to see how a patent on this drug will benefit society if it provides sufficient motivation to the drug's inventor to make the investment required to invent it. Software, however, is very different. Getting from an idea to a prototype in software requires very little investment and risk. This is the great strength of software. Its why Bill Gates, a college drop-out, could build a multi-billion dollar company out of nothing but the ideas in his head. Its why Linus Torvalds could later sow the seeds of an operating system built by volunteers that would challenge that multi-billion dollar company.
Patents should not apply to software for the simple reason that they would do far more harm than good, harming creativity rather than promoting it. Software doesn't need patents, copyright is more than adequate to provide the incentive software engineers need to turn their ideas into software. The cost to society of a 20 year monopoly over a software invention will never be justified, because it is inconceivable that any software invention could require such a powerful incentive. The price for this monopoly is paid by other inventors, and so the effect is to stifle innovation, not to promote it.
Unfortunately software is not the only fie
Re:What is wrong with software patents (Score:3, Interesting)
[QUOTE]Its why Bill Gates, a college drop-out, could build a multi-billion dollar company out of nothing but the ideas in his head.[/QUOTE]
Mr. Gates first sales were of a compiler and operating system to IBM. The OS he purchased from another programmer, and the compiler followed many of the same ideas and designs of DEC Basic (I've heard unsubstantiated rumors that he had looked at the sour
Re:What is wrong with software patents (Score:4, Interesting)
DMCA and other laws that protect the "intelectual property" is already harming this. In France, Guillaume Tena, is in jail for the simple reason that he validate a piece of saoftware and found ou that it has bugs. The bad thing is that this not even involve patents, it is copywrite and anti-reverse-engenieer laws.
I believe that copywrite and patents and almost any form of "intelectual property" is harmfull. science and arts do evolve by copying(*) of good ideas of others. How many movies of great directors you saw that "cite" or makes "homages" to other movies and other directors? This is a kind of copy, rewrite and rehash is part of creating, we as a society must learn to live with it.
As it stand, sometimes a copy is better then the original.
(*) Coping here is used refering to rewrites or re-enactments of a piece or many pieces of another work. Not to word-to-word or byte-by-byte xerox copy.
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Re:What is wrong with software patents (Score:3, Insightful)
The point I was making is that Bill Gates, who wasn't particularly wealthy, was able to succeed in software because of its low barriers to entry. I wasn't endorsing everything he has ever done.
Re:What is wrong with software patents (Score:4, Insightful)
The trouble is, for anyone skilled in a field there are few things that are truly innovative.
Encryption algorithms may seem advanced and innovative to you, but to a mathematician they're often old news barely worth a mention in a puzzle book. And to a programmer reasonably skilled in math, it's trivial to implement something like that in code, so no real 'invention' has been made.
Most new ideas are made up from small steps, and each of those small steps is often natural progression, incremental improvement. Hard work and toil, trying to solve a specific problem.
But patents are not supposed to be a reward for hard work. They're not a salary. And they definitely were not meant to take away someone elses salary and prevent them from reaping the benefit of their own hard work.
No, if we still need a state sponsored reward for inventions, let the patent office grant grants instead. If they think an invention is such a great leap that it deserves a reward, let the government pay out a cash prize instead.
The small inventor would be far more likely to profit from such a scheme, and the patent office could have an interest in not letting someone patent the green, blue, yellow, red and black paperclip because that makes them seem five times as productive and the country five times as innovative.
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Re:What is wrong with software patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is incidentally something RMS has so far been unable to do. Linus plugged the gaping hole in GNU that was/is the quagmire of Hurd.
While I respect the GNU people for GCC and the GPL, I don't consider the rest of the necessary stuff as all that difficult to write: libc and the unix utilities. I call my systems GNU/Linux mainly because of GCC (and in spite of things like "info"). Calling Linux "only" a kernel is a joke; you can't do anything without kernel (or the compiler). So maybe Linus could give more credit to GNU, but then again maybe he would if RMS didn't try to aggrandize himself at every opportunity...
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Re:What is wrong with software patents (Score:3, Funny)
Into the fish? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Into the fish? (Score:5, Funny)
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Council of Agriculture and Fisheries ??????? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Council of Agriculture and Fisheries ??????? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes I know it has nothing to do with agriculture, and I think it's a stupid idea to.
The reason it got to this committee was that certain people had pushed and railroaded it through, and they wanted it passed by people who had no concept of it's effect and so wouldn't ask questions.
So good on Poland
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Re:Council of Agriculture and Fisheries ??????? (Score:5, Interesting)
Normally, turning a political agreement in a common position is just a formality. That's the reason why it can be done by any kind of Council formation.
Of course, in this case we have the fact that Poland really abstained [ffii.org] in May (although they were recorded as voting in favour) and that since November change of voting weights there no longer is a qualified majority because of this, the fact that the Dutch parliament asked its government to change the pro-vote into an abstention, a similar motion by the German Bundestag etc.
Diplomatic inertia is a powerful force to fight, however: political agreements are "always" turned into a common position, so they want to do it this time as well, even though it's completely against democratic principles [lenz.name].
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Re:Council of Agriculture and Fisheries ??????? (Score:4, Informative)
The €C were hoping that the farmers and fishing folk wouldn't notice that this fishy directive was being shoved through their council. NB: the €C only added it to the list of directives to pass at the council one working day before the council met (even though they are supposed to give at least six weeks notice) and were hoping no one would notice so it would have got passed by default.
Thankfully, both times they've tried this trick the Polish minister has been awake. Clearly they intend to keep on trying in the hope that eventually they'll get away with it. It seems that if everyone in the room snores through the entire meeting, it gets accepted by default.
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Corruption (Score:4, Insightful)
Fisheries and Agriculture? The people behind this must be offering big backhanders to all involved to push this through at all costs, that's all I can say.
Re:Corruption (Score:5, Insightful)
The European parliament is trying to get this directive axed, it's the European Council that's trying to get it through.
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Re:Corruption (Score:5, Informative)
The majority of the council of ministers are against and nearly all of the parliament are (in fact I think every single MEP is against the proposal as it currently stands including McCarthy).
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Re:Corruption (Score:5, Informative)
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Patents in the EU and USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Software patents delayed yet again again (Score:4, Informative)
Effectively, this means that if the minister of economy votes in favor of the directive on january 31, he will be forced to withdraw his vote when he returns.
Article (in danish):
http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&
NoSoftwarePatents has it in English (Score:4, Informative)
But it's good news in whatever language :-)
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UK Wants EU Directive (Score:4, Informative)
We already have patents for computer-implemented inventions in the UK. 20% of patents are for the above. Here's a few sentences on open source, even though your letter doesn't mention it. That's because we're sending you a boilerplate letter. The UK supports the EU Directive on software patents. We think UK innovators and users, especially small firms want software patents. There's no evidence that software patents will harm the industry. Not even in America. The EU Directive will only clarify the current law, not change it. UK Government did a consultation exercise in autumn 2000, which concluded that the status quo of having software patents is the best position. I'd never heard of this consultation. DTI is about the private sector. Nowhere in the letter does it reference my concern: the public sector.
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Re:UK Wants EU Directive (Score:3, Interesting)
In my humble and unprejudiced opinion, Patricia Hewitt is a brain-dead industry yes-woman ("...outsourcing is good. We have appointed the CEO of an Indian outsourcing company to determine the effects and will be reporting soon...").
Re:Capitalism (Score:5, Informative)
The EU process for creating and ratifying a law is long winded - a simplified version (likely to contain errors - there is a proper long winded description at the official EU website but I can't be bothered looking it up) is that the comission will usually suggest a law, whereupon the parliament will discuss it and suggest changes and vote on it, after which the council will debate it and vote upon it, at which point it will go back to the parliament, giving parliament a second chance to reject it and force a reconsideration or restart the process.
The reason the council has the power it has is that the council represents the national parliaments, and because the EU is not a state/country or a federation it does not have real law making power itself. The EU can NOT create binding laws for the member states. It can issue directives requiring the member states to create laws or face sanctions.
The council members can be directed by national parliaments using whatever processes the member states prefer, while the national parliaments have no such authority over the EU parliament, and hence the EU parliament CAN'T be given control over the law making process without a dramatic shift in the power balance towards the EU.
Allowing the EU parliament to effectively make law (as opposed to now, when it can prevent a directive from being passed, which doesn't prevent the member states from unilaterally creating a law) would likely require ammendments to the custitutions of most EU member states since it would involve giving up sovereignty. Under the current process, on the other hand, the governments are only bound to treaties which, though costly to do, they can pull out of, and which retain the national parliaments sovereign rights to pass laws on behalf of their citizens.
In essence, the council is a result of the process by which the EU has been created as a loose confederation where the EU government is subordinate to the member states' governments. If the EU at some point becomes a federation, it would be logical to remove the council, or transfer large parts of the power to the parliament, but that's not a very likely prospect for many years.
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Re:Capitalism (Score:3, Informative)
The EU member states are subject to EU laws, there's economic union thanks to the Euro. This also dictates taxes and monetary policy.
Re:My MEP's response... UK Labour Party line (Score:4, Informative)
They did not table the amendments (which I think were mostly tabled by UK Green and SNP MEPs) but they (specifically UK Labour MEP, Arlene McCarthy) did table the proposed directive they claim they called to be amended.
No Labour MEPs voted for it to be amended.
The UK Labour MEPs consistently used threats and underhand tatics to try and stop those amnedments being passed by other MEPs.
The UK MEPs originally wrote and proposed this directive.
Check the record on the European Parliament WWW site.
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