[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
[DotGNU]Int'l Herald Trib on Software Patents in Europe
From: |
Seth Johnson |
Subject: |
[DotGNU]Int'l Herald Trib on Software Patents in Europe |
Date: |
Mon, 02 Feb 2004 13:14:49 -0500 |
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Farber <address@hidden>
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 07:04:30 -0500
Subject: [IP] Int'l Herald Trib on Software Patents in Europe
Delivered-To: address@hidden
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 05:24:38 -0500
From: Seth Johnson <address@hidden>
Subject: Int'l Herald Trib on Software Patents in Europe
To: address@hidden,
address@hidden,
address@hidden,
address@hidden, address@hidden,
address@hidden
Cc: address@hidden
(A remarkable non-perverse article on the situation regarding software
patents in Europe. Congrats to the hardy COMDEX demonstrators, who if
my guess is right seem to have helped this reporter get so much of the
story straight. You read it, and the cumulative impact seems to me to
be clearly on the side of opposing software patents. Europe has had a
law stating straight up that computer programs "as such" cannot be
patented, since the 1970's. However members of the "patent
establishment" and the European Patent Office have been using the two
words "as such" in intensely bizarre ways to rationalize the granting
of software patents. Last September, when they recently attempted to
get the EU Parliament to legitimate this [illegal] practice by
codifying it in law, organizers mobilized and assisted the Parliament
members in delivering a solid rebuke, thoroughly amending the law so
that it clearly established that software was not included in its
scope. Let's hope the long overdue sea change for information freedom
is being signalled by our friends in Europe. Forwarded from FSF
Europe - Ireland list. Article text posted below. -- Seth)
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Fsfe-ie] Good article on swpat in International Herald and
Tribune
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 09:28:06 +0000
From: Ian Clarke <address@hidden>
To: "address@hidden" <address@hidden>
http://www.iht.com/articles/127600.htm
Tries to be balanced although I think most would come away from
reading it with an anti-swpat impression (as they should!).
Ian.
_______________________________________________
address@hidden mailing list
List information: http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/fsfe-ie
Public archive: https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-ie
---
> http://www.iht.com/articles/127600.htm
Europe's tug of war over software patents
Jennifer L. Schenker IHT
Monday, February 2, 2004
PARIS You cannot patent software in the European Union today - except
if the software is part of a separate invention or process, and even
then, it depends on your country.
That can be a murky way to define a patent, both critics and
supporters of the status quo would agree, and they are locked in a
tempestuous tug of war to pass a new law in their favor.
On one side is big business - largely corporations with large research
investments and scores of patents - which wants to make all software
patentable in the EU to mirror U.S. and Japanese law and preserve
their right to collect royalties and protect their work.
The opponents - made up of small and medium-size software companies,
academic institutions and supporters of "open source" software, among
others - want to make sure software cannot be patented at all,
allowing them to
create software without fear of lawsuits.
A European Parliament bill that would have made all software subject
to patenting is the focal point of the outrage among technology
activists. Opponents of the bill succeeded in adding amendments in
September that would essentially prevent patents from being issued for
most types of software. The proposal is due back in Parliament in the
next few months, and the outcome is far from certain.
Software patenting issues are not new. In the United States, Amazon
famously patented its "one-click" shopping technology and forced a
competitor, Barnes & Noble, to change its Web interface in 2002. In
2000, BT Group said it had patented the ability to "hyperlink," or
point and click on text on the Web, though it subsequently lost a
court case over the claim.
More such assertions are emerging all the time, said Mike Butler, a
London-based patent attorney for Hammonds, a European law firm,
pointing to the need for some legal guidelines.
Opponents of patenting software include some of Europe's most
promising young technology companies, such as the Norwegian browser
maker Opera and MySQL, a Swedish open-source database company. They
say software patents kill innovation and point to studies that say
implementing them leads to less, rather than more, research and
development.
But patent lawyers working for some of the biggest American and
European technology firms argue the opposite: They say that no company
will make large investments in software unless they know it is
protected.
In a letter sent to the EU in November, the chief executives of some
of Europe's biggest technology companies - Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens,
Philips and Alcatel - warned that E15 billion, or $18.7 billion, of
their combined annual research and development spending could be
wasted if software is freed from patenting.
The current uncertainty hurts innovation, said Hakon Wium Lie, chief
technology officer of Opera, which has received letters charging that
it has breached a variety of American patents. "In most cases, our
analysis concluded that we were not in breach, but it was very
expensive for us to deal with this," he said. If Europe also adopts
software patents, he said the problem would become much worse. "All in
all, software patents are good for lawyers, but not software," Lie
said. "We don't see how patents will benefit us in any way."
A software patent recently issued by the European Patent Office shows
the extremes to which a single case can be interpreted. The patent
granted could cost every online government project in Europe - and by
extension every taxpayer - royalty fees, or not.
At the end of last year, Sign On, a public software company in
Stockholm specializing in electronic signatures and forms, was granted
patent rights to the process of securing the transmission of
electronically signed documents via the Internet. The patent covers as
many as 27 European countries.
"Sign On's patent is so wide that it can cover all secure ways of
sending e-documents, a process which is key for e-government and other
types of e-services," said Hans Sundstrom, chief legal adviser of the
Statskontoret, a department of the Swedish government that handles
procurement contracts for some 7 billion Swedish kroner, or $947
million, of information technology equipment annually for various
government agencies.
Sundstrom said the patent could end up causing taxpayers to pay more
and should be ruled invalid because it covers "banal processes" that
do not represent any real innovation.
Andreas Halvarsson, executive vice president of Sign On, said that
with the European patent, Sign On could theoretically demand that all
European governments use its technology in e-government projects. He
said no formal decision had yet been made by Sign On's board about how
it planned to take advantage of the European patent.
"We won't ask governments for money, but we are interested in seeing
our platform used," he said. "That is the whole idea of developing our
patent."
Sign On, which last year was granted a national patent by the Swedish
Patent and Registration Office for its secure transmissions, is facing
a legal challenge from the Statskontoret, which says it developed its
own software to handle procurement contracts between 1995 and 1998,
before Sign On staked its claim in 1999. The company says the
Statskontoret created its software after reviewing Sign On's
technology.
The Swedish agency will fight not only the Swedish patent but any
attempt to apply the European patent in Sweden, Sundstrom said. Other
countries will have to battle the patent separately, he added.
Europe has a chance to take a leadership role by deciding that
software should be treated differently than other inventions, say
organizations such as the Munich-based Foundation for a Free
Information Infrastructure.
But patent lawyers argue that it is more important that Europe adopt
the same patent rules as the United States and Japan.
Current rules are "wholly unattractive for global companies seeking a
coherent means of protecting their rights," said Butler, the London
patent attorney. "It means, for example, that they will not be able to
protect functionality in the EU that they can in the U.S. or Japan. It
makes Europe a less attractive place to do business."
Even lesser solutions generate huge protests. Those against software
patents argue that copyright protections are enough so that patents
aren't needed. Those for patents say copyrights will not stop someone
from reverse-engineering a product and coming up with a different
product with the same functionality. They say only a patent offers
protection.
The topic is due to come up at a Council of Ministers meeting sometime
in the next few months and then go back to the European Parliament.
In January, Laura Creighton, a venture capitalist, and a half-dozen
other people marched in an anti-software-patent protest outside the
Scandinavian Comdex tech show in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Creighton said she had invested E2.5 million in Straakt, a Swedish
software company specializing in procurement. Later, she learned
about the Sign On patent. "When that patent showed up, it was, 'Good
God, we are dead,'" she said.
--
DRM is Theft! We are the Stakeholders!
New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org
[CC] Counter-copyright: http://realmeasures.dyndns.org/cc
I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution
of this incidentally recorded communication. Original authorship
should be attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an
expectation might hold for usual practice in ordinary social discourse
to which one holds no claim of exclusive rights.
Archives at:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
- [DotGNU]Int'l Herald Trib on Software Patents in Europe,
Seth Johnson <=