Posted on 01/19/2005 10:32:05 AM PST by jb6
MPs are fighting the corner of small software developers to clarify a new EU law on patenting that could spell bankruptcy for thousands of independent UK writers.
Science Minister Lord Sainsbury has been told by Liberal Democrat IT minister, Richard Allan, that he must clearly spell out the implications of the Directive to allay fears of an innovation shut down.
According to the Times, he believes small UK IT writers are entitled to know “how high the hurdle is to get a patent,” because of current proposals tipped in favour of big business.
Microsoft has already labelled anyone opposing the law and its US-style model of software patenting as “modern day sort of communists.”
The comments from Bill Gates reflect significant gains made by independent software creation, Firefox, against the company’s dominant but consecutively flagging IE browser.
This is a prime example of where the Directive would intervene for big business, to ensure patents on the source code of the most basic software would stop individual programmers, legally or financially, from developing any similar products.
It is expected that smaller outfits in the UK will simply not be able to afford the cost of license fees or ensuing legal cost, spelling trouble for individual writers, firms and open-source providers.
The BBC’s technology critic, Bill Thompson, said if the law is nodded through by the European Union, any programmer will fear the code they are developing is in breach of someone else’s patent.
“This is not about stealing software, as code is already protected by copyright,” said Thompson. “Patents are not copyright, but something much stronger.
“A patent gives the owner the right to stop anyone else using their invention, even if the other person invented it separately.”
He cited the example of online retailer Amazon, which in the US owns the patent to a customer credit card database, which lets customers check out in one click.
No other company can build a similar one-touch payment system that stores the buyer’s address online, without consulting Amazon and agreeing to comply with due terms and conditions.
Under current EU proposals, a similar system of technical authority would come into play for European nations, prompting Poland’s move in December to withdraw and thereby derail the legislative progress of the Directive.
Their decision to table an amendment to the uncertain and burdensome law is further comfort to writers and small software developers in the UK.
One group supporting Poland’s protest and the voices of many smaller software developers is the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure.
They believe computer software is already prone to domination by the most powerful global players and any legal enforcement of patent monopolies would “set this domination in concrete.”
Citing Microsoft’s claim to be filing up to 3,000 software patents per year, the FFII said the software giant is no longer the only IT heavyweight to aggressively push for patents in Europe.
They said that copyright protection should serve the European market place adequately, and is a welcome alternative to the raft of Japanese and US patents that would suddenly be enforceable in the UK.
“Software patents would reduce the competitive pressure for innovation, reinforce monopolies and reinforce market domination by the most established, largest and most powerful companies,” said the FFII.
“They would be bad for small businesses, bad for open source, bad for innovation, bad for e-commerce and bad for software users.”
The group said that they hope the Directive will clearly identify what products are eligible to patent and what ones have fixed limitations, beyond which developers will be liable for their creations.
Well what can I say, Poland rules!
Microsoft has already labelled anyone opposing the law and its US-style model of software patenting as “modern day sort of communists.”
I guess we can call Gates the "Stalin" of the Computer Technology world.
Software should be subject to copyright only, not to patent. Algorithms are mathmatical structures, which are discovered, not invented, even programs instantiating them are really just theorems in a certain formal system. Patenting software is like patenting calculus, matrix multiplication, or a big prime number. It's an absurd and abominable notion.
If MS can have a patent on one of their spaghetti-coded packages of fairly trivial algorithms (leaving aside encryption algorithms, none of which were created by MS, so far as I know, and graphics rendering software, most of the really useful mass-market software we all rely on is fairly trivial mathematically), I want a patents on crossed bimodules over Hopf algebras and the bicategory of categories of measurable fields of Hilbert spaces, and joint patents on the category of tangles, the Crane-Yetter state-sum, and the HOMFLY polynomial. (They could even be valuable some day--if certain approaches to quantum gravity turn out to be correct I could be sitting on a basis for patent claims for any technologies using it, warp drive and time-travel come to mind, even without ever doing any physics!)
Gates isn't a capitalist at all, he's a modern day mercantilist.
Sounds like several Freepers. Could Bill Gates be a crypto-Freeper?
I think that copyrights go on and on where patents expire in less than 20 years. I hope someone gets moving on your time travel so you can cash in -- time's a wastin'!
Yes, you could be the next generation's George Selden.
The USPTO thought so too until an activist judge forced them to grant a patent on an algorithm, paving the road for software patents as we know them today.
I trust you realize I was being deliberately absurd in suggesting that I should hold patents on the as-yet-far-from-any-application mathematical theorems I have to my credit. I picked quantum gravity as an application because there is a small group of very good theoretical physicists who think the kind of math I do is the thing Einstein was missing when he lamented 'The mathematicians can't tell me what I need to know,' late in his career, and tacked on the most appealingly sci-fi sounding things folks have thought of as 'applications' of the physics to drive home the point of how far-reaching the ripple effects of patenting mathematics would be.
So another crack in the edifice of civilization thanks to an 'activist judge', what else is new?
The USPTO was correct, the judge was wrong, and the sooner his precedent is overturned here the better.
Much though the Europeans condescension towards America galls me, I do not wish them to adopt our errors.
It is a question of how narrow or wide a patent should be.
US companies have been SCREWED by foreign patent laws which allow only narrow patent interpritations. Thus if you patent uses a spherical bulb as a label fuser a narrow patent country would allow a competitors to use a rod fuser bulb and say the patent was not violated.
Then they say the subtle change is a "new technology". Granted this is just an example but this is a very real problem in the face of rampant global fake products flooding the markets.
Both sides have merit to this issue and you can't look at it only through the lens of Microsoft vs everyone. A broad patent can protect the little guy as much as the big guy.
Huh? (LOL !!!)
Yes, I was well aware of your jest -- sorry if I didn't make it clear, as I have been opposed to software patents from way, way back.
My reference to George Selden was equally only as a jest -- Mr. Selden was a lawyer who concocted an equally absurd patent on the whole of idea of automobiles, and forced all automakers to pay him a royalty on every car made in the United States until Henry Ford finally broke his silly patent in court.
I will eventually learn not to make ironical comments without at least the courtesy of a smiley. ;-)
A patent is a legal monopoly.
But one that can be overturned if the monopoly uses it in anti-competitive ways, ways contrary to the reason for patents as stated in the Constitution. Unfortunately, the little guys can't afford to do that.
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