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Re: [LUG] software patents

 

On Thursday 23 June 2005 6:37 pm, Paul Sutton wrote:
> Just got an e-mail from eurolinux petition,  regarding software patent
> 2nd reading within the next 2 weeks,

The battle against software patents in Europe is getting harder and harder. 
Even some of the supportive MEP's voted with the Council in the most recent 
JURI meeting - which caused confusion and angst across the community. 

We've seen and agreed with many, many rants over the years about unaccountable 
politicians, unrepresentative representatives and undemocratic democracies. 
It's all too easy to fall into despair - personally I've found it hard to 
retain any perspective or optimism since returning to my code from holiday. 
We're running around like blue-ended flies keeping our own code operative and 
updated, fixing problems and spending time on more and more elusive bugs. All 
the time, our so-called representatives are so panicky about the EU 
constitution and the lack of a budget that there is growing pressure to get 
*something* agreed - anything will do - just get something vaguely 
legislative out of the door before the whole system collapses from inertia.

The lobbyists with the biggest budgets will win in this situation. EU laws 
really are available to order for the highest bidder - and there are few 
bigger than the backers of software patents.

It's vital that we get the message through. The latest LXF has an interview 
with Alan Cox who describes the patent system well:

<quote>

"The patent system is essentially a gambling machine for people with no morals 
- if you file enough dodgy lawsuits, eventually you'll win so much money that 
it's worth playing the game. So that's a fundamental problem with the patents 
system, but it's not a problem with the idea of patents themselves, it's a 
problem with the implementation"
(It's not on the web yet, so no URL.)

Continues:
"When you come to software, you've got all sorts of other problems, because 
software is a literary work. A long time ago there was an argument about 
whether software is a machine or literary work. You can't copyright a 
machine; you can patent ideas with it, but everybody else can build the 
machine so long as they've got the patent licences. They can look at your 
machine and say, "I can see how to do this without the patent or after your 
patent has expired." The decision at the time, which is written into things 
like the WIPO [the World Intellectual Property Organisation], was that 
software is a literary work. So patents don't apply to literary works, at 
least until the Americans got involved, and if you try to apply patents to 
literary work all sorts of things start to go very, very pear-shaped in the 
legal framework, because the author of a literary work also has various other 
protections under WIPO that appear to conflict with software being 
patentable."

...

"You notice that everyone is saying IP version 6 is this, is that and there's 
all this research software up there. No one at Cisco is releasing big IPv6 
routers. Not because there's no market demand, but because they want 20 years 
to have elapsed from the publication of the standard before the product comes 
out - because they know that there will be hundreds of people who've had 
guesses at where the standard would go and filed patents around it. And it's 
easier to let things lapse for 20 years than fight the system."

</quote>

Fancy waiting until 2025 to use tabbed palettes, electronic shopping carts,  
rerouting of incoming orders to a vendor, automated loan applications, seeing 
related results if you like the current ones or material reproduction of 
information stored at remote location?
http://webshop.ffii.org/

Some may be willing to wait 20 years to inter-operate with Microsoft XML 
formats but the patent isn't confined to that, it could apply to other XML 
implementations and the ambiguity can only be properly resolved in court. Who 
can afford that?

What about not being able to use a GUI print manager for 20 years? These are 
just the patents we know about - there are tens of thousands of others that 
may or may not have implications for vast areas of the software world and 
only a court can produce a reliable verdict on which may actually matter. 
Most patents will expire before any reliable decision can be made, leaving 
the door open for unscrupulous parasite companies to make open threats 
without fear of retribution. The only thing that *is* certain in this whole 
mess is that the lawyers who get to make these judgements are NOT going to do 
it for free or even on the side of freedom. Lawyers represent their clients 
and when the clients have huge pockets, the lawyers can pay their mortgage. 
What would you do if you were on the other side of the debate?

What about pressure in the USA currently to extend that 20 years to 50 or 99 
or longer? Once a limitation is imposed, the absolute value of that 
limitation can be changed without full debate and without opportunity for any 
opposition to be heard, let alone be heeded.

Don't be fooled into thinking that this will pass you by - in the eyes of the 
pro-patent lobby we are already criminals, all of us. This is not even a 
hidden threat, companies behind the lobbyists have openly promised to sue to 
"protect" their "property". All that stands in their way is this Directive.

Literally, we are one vote away from being sued. Things are urgent!

> So lets keep up the pressure, on 
> this subject.

Absolutely.

Feel free to post content on the Wiki about how you've phrased your own 
appeals to our representatives. At the moment, it's all my content - I'd like 
to see other people adding their own pages in the section describing their 
own reasons for opposing software patents and include some of the content of 
letters they've written to the only people in Europe who can do anything 
about the Directive.

It's all very good me sounding off on this list, if anyone wants to be using 
free software in 5 years time they had better join the fight NOW! 

Microsoft for one have openly promised to sue once software patents are 
legally enforceable. We've almost certainly seen off SCO but M$ are a much 
more serious threat (we can't expect them to run out of cash any time soon) - 
and don't think it will necessarily be BG himself, there are a host of other 
companies that can be vehicles of lawsuits that are based on patents held by 
other companies that are somewhere within the nebula that is the Microsoft 
Corporation. It's v.hard even identifying if a patent IS held by Microsoft - 
most patent applications don't cite the main parent company but some little 
offshoot holding company wholly owned or controlled from Redmond.

Next time you're on a Windows box, open up a PDF in IE and just watch the 
patent numbers scroll by on the Adobe Acrobat splash screen. Every single one 
of those is a software patent that could be used against free software across 
the EU if this directive is passed.

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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