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Int'l Herald Trib on Software Patents in Europe
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 07:04:30 -0500
Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 05:24:38 -0500 From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson () RealMeasures dyndns org> Subject: Int'l Herald Trib on Software Patents in Europe To: C-FIT_Community () RealMeasures dyndns org, C-FIT_Release_Community () RealMeasures dyndns org, fairuse-talk () nyfairuse org, DMCA_Discuss () lists microshaft org, DMCA-Activists () gnu org, patents () aful org Cc: pho () onehouse com (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 <ian () locut us> To: "fsfe-ie () fsfeurope org" <fsfe-ie () fsfeurope org> 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. _______________________________________________ fsfe-ie () fsfeurope org 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. 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- Int'l Herald Trib on Software Patents in Europe Dave Farber (Feb 02)