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On Tuesday 09 November 2004 12:23 pm, Neil Williams wrote: To bring everyone up to date, here's the current situation: 1. The original directive is awful. This is because of broad wording around some of the central terms, particularly that of technical contribution. So long as the software can be shown to be technical, it becomes patentable [under the original directive]. Sadly, it seems any piece of software can be shown to be technical, so this apparent restriction on pure software patents is actually nothing of the sort. http://www.softwarepatents.co.uk/current/technical-contribution.html The idea of technical contribution cannot be applied fairly because it is, at its heart, an illogical test. A flawed test will result in flawed decisions. The Patent Office claim that 15% of their thousands of annual applications are software-related. There are fewer than 10 which have been rejected in the appeals process as being non-technical. It seems software "inventions" are rarely refused on the basis of non-technicality; that says an awful lot about the strength of the test. 2. The amended directive IS worth supporting: The directive, as passed, has several amendments made to it. It is only the amended directive that we are in support of, because the amendments contain crucial limitations and definitions which make it absolutely clear what is patentable and what is not. It has been made clear that running software on a computer is not technical (you may have thought this limitation was implicit in the original directive; it's not). It's also clear that handling information cannot be technical - MEPs have correctly recognised that patents of software that processes information is essentially a patent on an algorithm. http://www.softwarepatents.co.uk/current/directive.html 2a: In order to be patentable, something needs to be of industrial susceptability. The amended directive contains a strict definition of industry: "industry" in the sense of patent law means "automated production of material goods". This is the traditional meaning of industry within patent law, and ensures that this limitation actually does something. 3. My main concern: Interoperability It has long been suspected that many companies will take out patents not to protect an "innovation", but purely to place an obstacle in the path of their competitors. There are many examples of this, which is surely an abuse of the patent process. But again surprisingly, the original directive made no mention or accommodation for this, even though the right to author interoperable software has long been upheld in European law (such as the directive on copyright). This amended directive contains a clause which specifically permits interoperability in software. This is extremely important: it means that patents can only be used to protect innovation, a defensive measure. They are not allowed as offensive tools to be used against your competitors. The text originally proposed - and the text which looks like being proposed by the Council - both suffer serious flaws. September 24, 2003 the European Parliament (which is elected directly by the people in the EU) voted on the commission's proposal. The Members of the Parliament decided to pass a heavily modified version of the directive which would prevent patentability of pure abstract software without a technical context. This decision to value the needs of European economy higher than the wishes of the excessively lobbying global companies was widely regarded as a victory for democracy. Support the Directive as amended by the European Parliament! May 18, 2004 the council of the European Union (which consists of the Ministers in charge of the member states) rejected the parliament's version and agreed upon a text that is basically the same as the original proposal of the commission, and in some respects even worse. The decision process in the European Union is very complex. Now it's again the parliament's turn to agree with the council or to present a counterproposal. The further steps will depend on whether the parliament is able to keep up it's non-acceptance of software patents. http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/swpat.en.html I'll try and update the software patent pages on DCLUG later on. Anyone with an interest in this area is welcome to REVIEW the existing patents for themselves at FFII. Analyze European logic patents that have already been granted! Together we are collecting a database, that allows to quickly locate industry sector and application specific examples. http://www.ffii.org/ffii-cgi/aktiv Just register and select 'My Patents'. A random patent will be selected for you. If it isn't in your field, you can ask for another one instead. I got two on the details of colour printing methods before I got one that was attempting to patent: A method for processing a file of information through use of a display screen, a keyboard and a memory store, the file including a plurality of records, each record having a plurality of text fields, http://swpat.ffii.org/pikta/txt/ep/0066/674/index.html.gz#aclm No kidding, they want to patent: SELECT name,address,email FROM subscribers WHERE name LIKE "%loser%"; (when entered by a person at a keyboard). 1. A database (at it's lowest level) is just another file. It can contain more than one record and each record usually contains more than one text field. 2. Any file access requires a memory store, even `cat` or `less`. 3. As 'database' isn't mentioned, this EVEN applies to a tarball of vCard files, a tar archive of XML address book records, a single XML file that contains more than one contact, even a CSV file that contains more than one line. You get the option to highlight the patent as invalid, horror gallery, somewhat OK, possible and worthwhile. (That one is clearly INVALID - there is no technical contribution in displaying a text file!!) PLEASE get involved, some of this stuff is absolute TRASH! -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.codehelp.co.uk/ http://www.dclug.org.uk/ http://www.isbn.org.uk/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/ http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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