Re: [Fsfe-uk] FFII news: ACCU conference panel on software patents, Oxford, Thursday April 15.

[P.L.Hayes]

On Friday 09 April 2004 15:49, James Heald wrote:

> Panellists (proposed speaking order):
>
>
> * Dr Puay Tang (Sussex University), to introduce the economics of
> patentability in general, and some of the particular pros and cons of
> software patentability.

Well I don't know what her stance is but even if she's anti-swpats I hope she 
doesn't manage to bamboozle the audience into believing that software patents 
are purely a matter for consideration by economists and businessmen. Just as 
I don't expect to find myself prohibited from writing down some minuet I made 
up or painting a seascape and giving away as many bloody copies as I like, 
I'll be damned if I'll have people telling me what software I can and cannot 
write.

> * Steve Probert (Patent Office), to explain the Patent Office view, and
> who can speak authoritatively about what is and is not patentable both
> now and under the latest versions of the proposed EU Directive.
>
> Steve Probert is a Deputy Director of the UK Patent Office.  He has
> handed down several decisions on "computer-implemented invention"
> patents, and now has the immediate responsibility in the Patent Office
> for technical aspects of the negotiations on the EU software patents
> Directive.

"...and who can speak authoritatively about what is and isn't patentable..." 
If that's the Patent Office's description Is it just me or does it sound like 
a declaration of intent to mislead? Well here's another declaration of 
intent: You can tell Mr. Probert that if the UK Patent Office succeeds in 
it's abominable and underhand attempts to help make software 'officially' 
patentable in the UK and Europe, I will ignore such a law as loudly as I can 
and I hope others will too. Loudly enough perhaps, that the European court of 
human rights will hear, and restore my right to freedom to engage in the arts 
and sciences. If they think they can get away with proprietarising an 
art/science/form of communication simply because it's new and only a few 
geeks care about it, they are mistaken.

> * Dr Sarah Weir (Cancer Research Technology), to discuss and contrast
> the experience of patents in the pharmaceutical/biotech sector, where
> patents are long established, and widely considered to be essential.
>
> Dr Weir oversees the protection and commercialisation of research from
> the research portfolios funded by Cancer Research UK and other funding
> bodies both in the UK and abroad.

What's she doing here? Nobody's trying to take away her rights to make her 
stupid little molecules. What the hell's the pharmaceutical industry got to 
do with it? Oh yeah! - I had a great idea for a molecule last night,  just 
hang on while I check I've still got that billion quid in my wallet so I can 
buy a lab to finish off the research and start up a molecule factory.... 

I read there's a free/OSS in education part to this conference too. Well it 
just so happens that last week a friend of mine in his final year of physics 
asked me if I could help him out. He's got some project to do that involves 
analysing images of the sun from the ESA. He's downloaded some IDL code from 
somewhere to do the analysis but this code is written (groan!) for reading 
gifs only. It uses the READ_GIF function which is built in to the proprietary 
IDL interpreter.... only it isn't built in anymore ! - at least not in the 
version (5.4) that the university has. Apparently, RS Inc. who make IDL, had 
a problem with Unisys about licensing the LZW patents and helpfully removed 
the ability to read and write gifs from version 5.4.

At the same time as I was discussing possible solutions to that problem, 
another physics student said he knew of a third party who's using Excel in 
his project and wondered what I thought about that.

http://www.csdassn.org/software_reports/gnumeric.pdf

I hope there's going to be some academic and educational eye-opening at this 
conference too.

Cheers, 
Paul.