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[LUG] Software patents

 

Comments please:

Editing and further examples are welcome via this Wiki page:
http://www.dclug.org.uk/wiki/?id=edit/Software%20patents

Where possible, I'd like to keep it specific to the area of inter-operability.

It comes across a little disjointed so far - a cascade if ideas rather than a 
cohesive whole.

This is to help me crystallise my ideas ready for the DTI conference on the 
14th.

---------------------------------------------------------

Software patents vs inter-operability.

I develop inter-operability software for GNU/Linux applications - making user 
data available outside the limitations of the original application. It's not 
just about knowing which application can load a file but providing the data 
in a format that any application can use. Developing code for this area is 
entirely concerned with building on the code of others. Nothing I do is 
intrinsically new because software itself is always built on existing 
foundations. I need full and free access to each application to provide 
communication so that the data remains as generic as possible, without losing 
any of the complexity that makes it useful.

It is ridiculous to try to claim that my work infringes patents because 
software is the expression of ideas, a communication between developers and 
machines. The growth of what is deemed patentable must be checked and the 
vagueness of the patent office stance must be eliminated. 

Patents on software would directly harm innovation because software grows from 
other software. Software evolves, gradually and in generally very small 
steps. It is wrong to consider such steps as patentable because no software 
exists in isolation - any one piece of software requires other software, 
there is always prior art. Software does not even need the restriction of 
patents - there is no cost of reproduction, no cost of duplication.

Patents are unnecessary and counter-intuitive in software development. 
Copyright alone is and will remain sufficient simply because copyright 
already exists longer than the software.

Or are we to consider patenting our emails? The written or spoken word is a 
form of communication just like a computer program. English is a language 
just like C or Fortran. Programmers are interpreters, converting ideas from a 
human language into a machine-readable language. Copying and duplicating 
emails and other digital formats does not diminish the original - the author 
has lost nothing by the act of copying, his/her copy still exists. Copyright 
deals with attributing the authorship of the original, licences can and do 
deal with the rest.

Patents do not encourage innovation in software - patents encourage secrecy, 
protectionism and isolationist attitudes. Unlike hardware, software does not 
grow by being restricted, it grows from communication, improvement, review, 
upgrade and in an incremental, undifferentiated, path. There is no 
justification for restricting the growth of something that costs nothing to 
copy.

What is worse is when patents are alleged to apply across languages. That is 
tantamount to saying that a patent on an elevator button applies to the 
controls of a microwave! Patents cannot be extended to dissimilar languages 
because the implementation (the technical step) in the patent declaration 
CANNOT be directly implemented in another language. If a patent can work 
across languages, then it is a patent of an IDEA, not a technical step. That 
is illegal even under the widest scope of patents.

Equally, a software technique cannot always be applied between applications or 
platforms, even when written in the same language. Developers are well aware 
of the problems of porting - the same idea requires radically different 
implementations on different applications, platforms or architectures. Again, 
the methods of porting a software technique rely on existing software - 
another layer of inter-operability. 

---------------------------------------------------

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.williamsleesmill.me.uk/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3

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