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Software Patents Stopped in India
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Apr 21, 2005 01:00 AM
from the no-means-no dept.
from the no-means-no dept.
piyushranjan writes "Indian parliament deleted the section from the patents bill regrading the software patents as left parties prevailed over the Government on the issue. This may be a major victory for free software foundation(fsf) which has been lobbying hard against the bill."
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The Myth of the New India 378 comments
theodp writes "An NYT op-ed on The Myth of the New India reports that only 1.3M Indians are participating in the so-called new economy of BPO, leaving 400M have-nots without a piece of the pie. Despite recent gains, nearly 380M Indians still live on less $1 a day, setting the stage for rural and urban conflict." From the article: "No labor-intensive manufacturing boom of the kind that powered the economic growth of almost every developed and developing country in the world has yet occurred in India. Unlike China, India still imports more than it exports. This means that as 70 million more people enter the work force in the next five years, most of them without the skills required for the new economy, unemployment and inequality could provoke even more social instability than they have already."
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Attention U.S. Citizens! (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks,
The Government
Re:Attention U.S. Citizens! (Score:5, Interesting)
What India has over the United States is that they not only have our technical jobs but they also have no legal restrictions on taking any technology learned during that "cultural" exchange.
Technology is what keeps a superpower on top. The Masons knew it, that is why they exist(ed). (Technological) Secrets make a nation thrive and the fact that the United States and Europe will restrict software developers with draconian laws makes our chances nill. If we continue to lead the way in innovations they will be copied at will overseas making *only* our citizens the ones to pay the price for intellectual property. Where will that leave us?
Our patents won't mean a thing when India and China make up most of the computer/internet users and developers. I'm afraid that we will be trying to play fair while others won't - reminds me of the game show "Friend or Foe", everyone must agree or everyone loses. I'm drunk, but look more into China and Russia's copying of CDMA technology to learn more about how we can lose...
Seems like a smart move. (Score:5, Insightful)
They have nothing to gain from adopting software patents.
Re:Seems like a smart move. (Score:5, Insightful)
Growing yes, innovating hardly. Little innovation means you dont actually have a lot to protect making patents a moot point anyway.
Re:Seems like a smart move. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't one of the arguments against software patents that most of the software patents aren't innovations at all, but mere logical steps forward? So, whose to say they aren't 'innovating' according to the US software patent system?
Re:Seems like a smart move. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I don't think most current innovation is in India _yet_. However this kind of move will certainly help India since they will be free to develop software without having to have to worry about lawsuits.
The ironic thing about software patents is that while their proponents suggest they will help foster innovation, in fact they have the opposite effect and end up only helping to employ IP lawyers instead of engineers.
So most US innovation is in the past? (Score:5, Insightful)
>> They have nothing to gain from adopting software patents.
Your "smart move" response offers the defence of smartness to both sides --- smart of India to bar software patents because they have nothing to gain, and smartness by the US to uphold software patents because they do have something to gain.
Unfortunately the last part of that is only true under the extraordinarily myopic worldview that most innnovations are in the past, and that therefore it is worth protecting the greater old at the expense of harming the lesser new.
Well that's stunningly short-sighted. The future is pretty much infinite, whereas technological progress of the patentable type has been around for a couple of centuries at most, and software patents even less, so the inventions of the past represent effectively zero percent of the body of technical development.
There could hardly be a greater condemnation of the inability of the supporters of patents to see beyond the ends of their noses.
Uh-Oh (Score:5, Insightful)
Couple that with healty dose of the encouragement of innovation, and we just took one right on the chin.
Re:Uh-Oh (Score:5, Insightful)
Economic impact of this? (Score:5, Interesting)
e.g. could a company over there build a search engine using Google's patented page rank algorithm with out having to pay an licensing fee?
If so, it would seem that India would be an ideal place for most such companies, as they can operate over there with out fear of patent litigation. Also, hopefully something like this would put pressure on the US to reform our current system in order for local companies to be more competitive.
Re:Economic impact of this? (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, Copyright Laws are international and know no bounds (but the chinese borders maybe), and they apply fully to software creation (copyright is what backs the GPL-like licenses).
The very point is that software patents aren't needed and are unnecessary, because not only they'd be redundant if they were always used well, but they're dangerous (for innovation, what they're supposed to protect mind you) when misused.
Re:Economic impact of this? (Score:5, Informative)
Google hasn't just patented their page rank algorithm. They've patented the idea of giving weight to the links that point to a page. (The competitors seem to be infringing that claim, probably because they are confident that the claim would be tossed by a court, but who knows?).
We could probably live with patents that protect precisely what the inventor invented, but no patent lawyer would settle for that. Instead, the claims generalize to the point of trying to block any conceivable competition, even with wholly new algorithms.
The situation in India is... (Score:5, Informative)
The government was required by the WTO to adopt a new patent regime in the pharmaceutical sector. There was plenty of opposition to this, mainly from the left, though leaving the WTO is simply not an option and everyone realises that.
So what the government does is have a temporary ordinance, not ratified by the parliament, that's somewhat more draconian that it needs to be. I think the software patents thing was one of those items that the government was always willing to chop. There were also lots of safeguards in the pharma sector itself (regarding making of generic drugs in the national interest), allowed by the WTO, that the government omitted from the ordinance. Even the New York Times had a strong editorial criticising the Indian Government for its unnecessarily restrictive ordinance.
When the time comes to pass it through parliament, voila, the government "accommodates" the left parties by introducing these safeguards and removing things like software patents. The left, in return, supports the bill. And everyone's happy.
Are Patent's Good? (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony is: they were designed to protect the small guy from the big guy. That's right. I shall repeat. They were designed to protect the small guy from the big guy.
They did this to encourage innovation.
You see, some guy in his garage could invent the television, a big company could come along and copy it, and make billions because he has a bigger operating budget. With patents, the guy could protect his invention, and the big guys couldn't steal his idea. All of a sudden, people want to invent because they can protect their ideas.
But now the patent system has turned on its head. It essentially protects the big guys from the small guys. Probably if we looked at patents in their stricted sense, a kid in their garage could write a text editor and infringe on hundreds of patents. I realize this doesn't usually result in a lawsuit, but the system is so convoluted that the only way to understand it is to hire expensive lawyers, which small guys tend not to be able to afford. So in many cases, the small guy gives up when faced with serious opposition (think RIAA).
Okay, I will freely admit that this post is a little inflamatory and that usually lawsuits are not launched even when a patent is owned for things like using key-combinations on a keyboard. But that's not the point.
The point is this: The patent system no longer does what it was supposed to do which is encourage the creation of new ideas. If a system no longer does what it was designed to do, THAT is the definition of broken.
Fantastic! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like pure bullying. Ericsson has NOTHING to gain in the area of protecting their software by moving to the US or Japan. You have to apply for patents in countries where you wish to RELEASE your product, not where you DEVELOP your products. So if Ericsson wishes to release products in both the US and Sweden, they have to apply for patents in both places, whether they have their factory located in the US or in Sweden. Actually, they run a higher risk in the US, because in the US a competitor might attempt to close them down because they are (alledgedly) infringing on one of the competitor's patents, while, without software patents in Sweden, in Sweden they wouldn't run any risk at all. That is aside the fact that rebuilding a factory and rehiring personnel in a very expensive country like the US would probably not be profitable. So, methinks this is a lot of hot air from Ericsson.
This is why competition is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are a lot of people who for one reason or another think that competition from other countries is a bad thing.
They seem to think that it is somehow 'unfair' that people in other contries can make product X cheaper. I don't know how many times I've heard the 'rush to the bottom' argument from people who obviously have no grasp of basic economics.
If you are one of those people please read this:
http://www.amosweb.com/cgi-bin/pdg.pl?fcd=dsp&ter
The reason competition is good in this particular case is because the US government is clearly not acting in its citizens best interest in regards to software patents.
The contries that have a more rational intelectual property policy will obviously benefit. This will do one of two things:
1. Businesses and citizens who create software will be forced to move to these 'enlightened' contries if they aren't there already. Basically the US will find itself locking itself out of the software market because producing software in the US will become too expensive or in some instances maybe even impossible.
2. Because of pressure from 1. the US will be forced to adopt better laws.
Basically if you can squash competition by making everyone obey your rules then you can force through productivity and creativity limiting laws such as software patents.
However in a free marketplace countries that have chosen not to incorporate such laws will naturally do better than countries that have. I'm assuming here of course that software patents stifle creativity and productivity but I think this is a pretty safe assumtption.
If you don't understand why software patents are bad please read this:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index
In short this is good for everyone because it will garantee that consumers of software will continue to benefit from the explosion of creativity and productivity in the software industry. Also for those of us who produce software this helps by putting real pressure on our government to change its tune in regards to software patents.
Re:Not only the FSF (Score:5, Funny)
Above is a Troll posting AC (Score:5, Informative)
It only shows he knows nothing of the Indian President. Here are some facts so people can see for themselves:
Some of his speeches [indianembassy.org]
A description of a personal encounter [tcs.co.in]
His own website describing his aspirations [abdulkalam.com]
A few of his accomplishments [indiainfo.com]
Finally, for those REALLY interested, here's his auto-biography [amazon.com]
Re:wow, I guess we'll... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wow, I guess we'll... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but it'll be patented in the USA, so posts like the trol^Wgrandparent won't be going away for a while.
Unless, of course, you're posting from India.
Soko
Re:More jobs to go (Score:5, Informative)
An Indian company can apply for software patents in America which will be valid in America, just like anyone else. Those patents won't be valid in India regardless of where you company is based.
Re:Mplayer should migrate to India (Score:5, Interesting)
Do not mistake the terms in EULAs for laws. Copyright does not grant the content provider the right to the restrictions they require in EULAs, that is why they need you to sign them over in a contract. For it to be a legal contract they must give you something of value in turn (purchasing gave you the right to use the material however you please without a contract), Microsoft gives you $5 worth of data loss protection IF you can successfully sue them for it. Aren't they swell?
Re:Not Good for Indian companies (Score:5, Informative)