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| EU Software Patents - What's Next & Some Testimonies |
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Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:15 PM EDT
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I discovered a wonderful page presenting testimonies, as they call them, from European business men and women on the subject of software patents and why innovation is encouraged when software patents are not allowed. It's fascinating, and you can get a feel for the reasons people have for their opposition to such patents. There is one tongue-in-cheek endorsement of business patents from the CEO of Nexedi. Here's a sample of some of the rest: - "Patents hamper innovation and interoperability on the World Wide Web" - Håkon Wium Lie,
Opera Software
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"Patents are nails in the coffin for the VoIP telephony industry" - Danny Fröberg,
Forest Star
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"Automotive Software needs Copyright not Patents" - Thomas Wünsche,
EMS
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"Software patents are not the best way to protect intellectual property" - Marten Mickos,
MySQL
- "Patents increase our costs by 30-50%, for the sole benefit of US competitors" - Stefane Fermigier, Nuxeo
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"Patents make individual software impossible" - Wolfgang Wopperer, mindmatters
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"Software patents enable big companies to do with smaller companies whatever they like" - Klaus Schmidinger, CadSoft
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"Software patents will clog innovation in the whole sector" - Mathias Conradt, Sysvision GmbH
Each snip is followed by a link to a longer, complete statement. It's a great idea to do such a page. For one thing, there are photographs of each person giving a statement, and they show normal business people, not crazed, radical hippies. The dark side likes to misrepresent those opposed to software patents, so the photographs of these folks in their suits and ties was a stroke of genius. There are many more there, and pictures of those giving their statements.
At the bottom of the page, there is this notice: If you would like to have your testimony presented here, send a email with your picture, logo, description and statement to em-testimony@ffii.org I assume you should be a European businessperson to participate. Here's a schedule of upcoming events related to software patents in Europe, taken from FFII's list: -
June 1 -- FFII & CCIA conference, at both the European Parliament and the Renaissance Hotel, Brussels, followed by a number of other events. details.
- June 2 -- Greens EFA & FSF conference on software patents and FLOSS, EP,
Brussels:
The "Software Patents" Directive is back in the European Parliament. It will be adopted by the Committee on Legal Affairs on June 20/21th. The plenary session will debate and the text in second reading during the first week of July. This conference takes place at a crucial moment of the intense debate on the software patents.
The impact software patents would have on Free Software is one of the key elements of the debate. Could Free/Libre/Open-Source software (FLOSS) still flourish in the European Union if the Directive legalizes software patents? We've gathered key representatives of the FLOSS community, from the public sector, private sector, and civil society, to debate this topic.
- June 2 -- EPP SME hearing.
- June 2 -- Demonstration, Brussels. http://demo.ael.be/ --
accompanied by a web demonstration.
- June 20-21 -- JURI committee votes on software patents
- June 30 - July 1 -- WIPO Worldwide Academy International Symposium on Intellectual Property (IP) Education and Research. Program.
- July 5-6 -- European parliament plenary discussion and vote
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| Authored by: laitcg on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:43 PM EDT |
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Slackware Tips & Tricks
http://members.cox.net/laitcg/slack.htm[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: prayforwind on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:44 PM EDT |
I get unknown host on a ping or traceroute, but whois shows
it's owned by FFII.
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jabber me: burySCO@jabber.org[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: laitcg on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:45 PM EDT |
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Slackware Tips & Tricks
http://members.cox.net/laitcg/slack.htm[ Reply to This | # ]
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- This is malice, not ignorance or stupidity. - Authored by: davcefai on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 01:41 PM EDT
- This is malice, not ignorance or stupidity. - Authored by: Fractalman on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 02:08 PM EDT
- "combination of legal and public relations exposures" - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 02:19 PM EDT
- Amusing - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 02:29 PM EDT
- This is malice, not ignorance or stupidity. - Authored by: pdp on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 02:32 PM EDT
- fyi - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 03:48 PM EDT
- ...developers... - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 02:45 PM EDT
- Ballmer - Authored by: ak on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 05:22 PM EDT
- This is malice, not ignorance or stupidity. - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 03:29 PM EDT
- I Think He Made Another Powerful Point - Authored by: tredman on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 03:38 PM EDT
- This is malice, not ignorance or stupidity. - Authored by: marbux on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 05:05 PM EDT
- This is malice, not ignorance or stupidity. - Authored by: PJ on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 07:00 PM EDT
- We're all thieves... - Authored by: Latesigner on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 09:36 PM EDT
- shows that he's attuned to aggresion, - Authored by: AveryAndrews on Tuesday, May 31 2005 @ 12:30 AM EDT
- Enderle is half-true again - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 31 2005 @ 02:46 AM EDT
- This is malice, not ignorance or stupidity. - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 31 2005 @ 12:25 PM EDT
- Gandhi said... - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 02:40 PM EDT
- Samsung starts making 4-Gbit flash on 70-nm process - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 03:00 PM EDT
- Microsoft cuts business ties to conservative Ralph Reed - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 04:30 PM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:46 PM EDT |
| Does anyone know whether this thing IBM
Global Innovation Outlook says anything useful about how we're going to get
where we want to go ?
The whole document is here [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: boban on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:54 PM EDT |
Simple idea - software patent will be granted as valid if a developer with 10
years of expirience in relevant field (and maybe a mensa membership too) cannot
be explained what it does in less than five hours, not counting domain-specific
knowledge (ie, if software has something to do with tax laws and programmer
needs to understand those first)?
I confeess this is only half serious,
but maybe not a bad idea to weed out all the trivial ones?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 01:50 PM EDT |
I would disagree with having to be a European Businessperson to participate.
If some small businesses in the U.S. can show how patents owned by a larger
competitor harmed their business, I think it would send a clear image on how
software patents are being used.
Just a thought!
RS[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 04:20 PM EDT |
I am ignorant of the EU process. But will the French vote against the
constitution effect in any way the EU patent process? It would seem that if the
EU itself is fundamentally in question, then the patent actions would also be.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: cybervegan on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 04:30 PM EDT |
Pamela Jones, I am shocked at this un-provoked attack on an idealistic
subculture of passive stargazers, with funny hairstyles.
...:-D
crazed 'hippy'
-cybervegan
fresh back from trading at a festival in the uk.
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Software source code is a bit like underwear - you only want to show it off in
public if it's clean and tidy. Refusal could be due to embarrassment or shame...[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: blacklight on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 04:37 PM EDT |
In the US, the award of software patents dramatically tilt the playing field in
favor of the large companies for the following reasons:
(1) only well-financed companies can afford to file for a series of software
patents;
(2) a small company that tries to assert a patent against a well-financed
company may very well fail at it for economic reasons, unless the small company
happens to have $1 million to spare for each patent asserted. For this reason, a
well-financed company may infringe upon a small company's patents and
essentiially treat them as a free resource - and get away with it;
(3) the well-financed company has the resource to look for prior art to
invalidate a small company's pesky patents;
(4) well-financed companies prefer to have an interlocking network of patents so
that network of patents (and thus the monopoly crerated by these patents)
continues to exist even as individual patents are succesfully challenged or die
out. If an individual software patent is a mine, then an interlocking network of
patents is a minefield.
In summary, software patents stink because well-financed companies can infringe
on small companies' patents and get away with it, whereas small companies simply
don't have the resources to assert their patents against the well-financed
companies. Those who assert that software patents protect small companies' IP
against the depredations of well-financed companies - well, those people work
for large, well-financed companies: it takes a certain amount of chutzpah (or
gall, for our non-Yiddish speaking friends) for the well-financed companies to
claim to be speaking on behalf of the very same small competitors they are
trying to crush.
I'll leave it to someone else to discuss submarine patents, which are used for a
single purpose: extortion. And extortion works as long as the target does not
want to commit the resources to properly litigate, often because it simply does
not have them.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: contrarian on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 04:52 PM EDT |
One small note to make:
The
hearing is at exactly the same time as the Greens' conference and
seems to have
been scheduled by the pro-rapporteur so that any undecided
MEPs looking for
views would be unable to attend the (anti-patent) Greens'
conference. Underhand
tactics by desperate people. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 08:50 PM EDT |
Thanks for the reference, I am sending it to my the one of my senators who is
likely to read what I write instead of circular-filing it, with a request to
consider their arguments and my own in regard to U.S. patent reform.
Ptraci.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: thorpie on Tuesday, May 31 2005 @ 12:48 AM EDT |
Patents were originally conceived to provide competitors with the knowledge
to do a process which they could not figure out how to do ie. a process that
they could not reverse engineer, such as how do they make that leather so
soft.
In return, for making this knowledge public, the inventor could
claim monopoly fees for 14 years.
The end result was not patentable, it
was the process and only the process that was patentable. And, effectively, the
rules of non-obviousness and originality meant the process was only patentable
when it was not reverse engineerable.
The alternative to a patent was for
a manufacturer to keep their process secret and keep their monopoly this way.
This was allowable and still is allowable. 200 years ago the 14 years monopoly
was a considered a fair trade because it was considered a "fair and average"
time for competitors to figure out to reverse engineer a process.
In
todays fast moving world no inventions meet this initial criteria, and patents
simply should not exist! Or, a patent should only be granted when the final
product has been released, and after 5 years of use people still cannot figure
out how to recreate/reverse engineer the process.
This applies not only
to software patents but to patents in all fields. Just how long is it since any
patent has met this criteria? ---
The memories of a man in his
old age are the deeds of a man in his prime - Floyd, Pink [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 31 2005 @ 09:52 AM EDT |
| It is worth mentioning that there is an earlier, parallel, site collecting
similar testimony from UK businesses here:
www.protectinnovation.org
it was
set up by FFII-UK, and contains some very insightful and interesting comments.
It has served as a very useful way to make contact with interested
business-people who can make a case that MPs/MEPs will take notice of (sadly
'the public interest' doesn't seem to get you very far with most
politicians).
As PJ observes, the pictures and logos make for a more
professional effect, but they also increase the hurdle to posting, and a year
ago when protectinnovation was launched the idea was to make it easy for people
to testify. After another year of wrangling the subject is that much higher
profile, giving people/companies sufficient incentive to get together the bits
for an economic-majority posting (note to self - must do that for Aleph One).
But then people would see that I do look like a crazed hippie :-) [ Reply to This | # ]
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