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Atahualpa
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Hawthrone
Mar 1999
time: 06:19
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quote:
European Parliament Rejects Law on Software Patents (Update2)
July 6 (Bloomberg) -- The European Parliament rejected a law on patents for software, ending a three-year effort by companies including Nokia Oyj and Siemens AG to counter U.S. domination of Europe's $60 billion market.
The parliament in Strasbourg, France, today voted 648 to 14 to throw out a draft law protecting inventions that combine software and machinery, such as code that reduces battery consumption on mobile phones. The assembly opposed U.S.-style limits on free software and ruled out a compromise with European Union governments, which endorsed the legislation in March.
``We buried a bad law and did so without flowers,'' said Eva Lichtenberger, an Austrian member of the parliament's Green group. ``The legislation would have hindered the development of small companies and helped big businesses because they are the only ones that can afford patent lawyers and litigation costs.''
EU governments were counting on the legislation to encourage investment. A lack of uniform rules in the 25-nation bloc means European companies trail U.S. firms such as International Business Machines Corp. in patenting software.
That puts companies like Ericsson AB, the world's biggest maker of wireless networks, and SAP AG, the No. 1 business- management software maker, at a disadvantage when negotiating technology-license agreements.
Missed Opportunity
The defeat is ``a missed opportunity,'' said Mark MacGann, director general of the European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Association, which represents companies including Nokia and Siemens. ``Harmonization would have been an optimal solution.''
Patents, unlike copyright, give holders exclusive rights to a technology for a set number of years. Patent holders can charge a license fee for their invention and restrict who uses it. Companies are increasingly seeking this protection for computer- driven inventions, which account for about a fifth of patent applications in Europe.
``There is important innovation coming out of the software industry,'' Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, said in Paris today before the parliament vote. ``We think that innovation needs to be protected.''
National Rules
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, proposed legislation on the patenting of ``computer-implemented inventions'' in 2002 to chip away at disparate national patent- enforcement rules and reduce the regulatory burden on Europe's technology industry.
The rejection emboldens a group of policymakers in Europe who are spearheading resistance to EU market-opening proposals in industries that range from services and airlines to energy and championing the rights of national regulators, workers and companies.
The threat of an EU parliament veto had hung over the draft software-patents law for months. Led on the issue by Michel Rocard, a Socialist former French prime minister, the parliament proposed to limit software patents in an initial vote in September 2003 and called for a new proposal in February this year after EU governments had signaled support for an industry-friendly version.
``It would have been impossible to amend the draft law in a way to reach a good result,'' said Piia-Noora Kauppi, a Finnish conservative.
Open Source
Advocates of so-called open-source software, such as the Linux operating system, had lobbied the parliament to restrict software patents because of concerns the EU would follow the U.S. approach, which gives patent protection to software and ideas such as Internet pop-up advertising. Patents can leave open-source developers and users vulnerable to infringement claims for inadvertently distributing patented methods.
Industry had pinned hopes on a software-patents law after broader plans for a European patent system stalled because of disputes between nations including Germany and Spain over language. The drive for a harmonized system is part of EU efforts to boost economic growth that has trailed the U.S. in 12 of the past 13 years.
A European system would end the risk of conflicting national court rulings on the same patent and trim intellectual-property protection costs, which are higher than in the U.S. A patent covering eight EU nations for eight years, for example, costs about 30,000 euros ($36,000) compared with about half that in the U.S., according to the Munich-based European Patent Office.
No New Proposal
The Brussels-based commission has no intention of submitting a new software-patents proposal, said spokesman Oliver Drewes.
Lawmakers including Kauppi said the rejection of the legislation should give fresh impetus to the creation of a single European system.
Jonathan Zuck, president of the Washington, DC-based Association for Competitive Technology representing about 3,000 smaller companies including 400 in Europe, urged more cooperation among existing bodies.
``The way forward is to work with the EPO and the national patent offices to ensure the continued patentability of software- implemented inventions,'' said Zuck, who was in Strasbourg for the vote.
The parliament could have sought changes to the text endorsed in March by national industry ministers or accepted that accord as it stood. Amendments would have led to negotiations on a compromise with the ministers.
The outcome wouldn't necessarily have pleased industry because it opposed some amendments the parliamentarians threatened to put on the negotiating table. These included proposals that would have prevented patents on digital technology such as high- definition television and on inventions in all their forms including interaction between hardware and software, according to MacGann of the European industry association.
These kinds of provisions ``could have narrowed the scope of patent legislation in Europe,'' he said.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Jonathan Stearns in Strasbourg, France at jstearns2@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: July 6, 2005 08:15 EDT
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aikfIyenYsZg&refer=home
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I think it's good, because big companies are not likely to die anyway, yet smaller companies still have the chance to compete in the market. This also puts pressure on the bigger ones as they need to develop and improve.
As little as the big ones like it, I think it helps them as well as they have to maintain a certain degree of flexibility.
Good or bad? Discuss.
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snoopy369
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Of the Peanuts Gallery
Apr 2004
time: 23:19
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The article certainly implied that at least 8 countries do ...
I wonder what, legally, the difference between a software patent and a software copyright is.
In the US, anyway, a patent is rights to a process, while copyright is the rights to a design.
For software, then, a patent, as I see it, would be the rights to a particular kind of program? For example, the rights to be the only one to write an interface for a specific kind of machine, or to write the driver software for your device, etc.
If that's correct, then I think I agree with you, UR, in some respects; but there are areas of development, particularly as the article says with software-machine interfaces, that might benefit from patent protection ... but it would have to be very, very limited, which is probably too hard for a government to get rigth ...
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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:19
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The headline is misleading. Software Patents can and will still be filed in Europe, there's nothing preventing those. The law that was shot down was something to explicitly allow them, right now they're neither allowed nor disallowed, and will still be granted.
That said, this is an awesome move. It'll drive more IT business away from Europe and into North America, which will properly protect and reward companies for spending billions on R&D.
Software patents are fine, in fact they're downright essential. Companies will be less likely to spend billions of dollars on R&D if there's no incentive for doing so. Software patents can guarantee the company competive advantage as motivation and reward for their research.
Without software patents, there will be far less incentive for companies to innovate. Why spend lots of money to research something everyone else will just do? Why spend your capital, your resources, on something that won't put you ahead of the competition?
The problem is the patent offices being too lenient on what can be patented, leading to ridiculous patents like one-click shopping...
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Atahualpa
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Hawthrone
Mar 1999
time: 06:19
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Software patents only reward big companies who then make cross-license agreements and keep everyone out of the business by creating a level of their own (even Sun and MS have a cross license deal). And when someone tries to enter, they buy them.
In the end the business landscape will be dominated by large corporations, they will influence the political landscape to a bigger degree as well and the customer and every other person is the one who gets screwed.
From wikipedia:
quote:
Most large software companies have cross-licencing agreements in which each agrees not to sue the other over patent infringements. For example, Microsoft has agreements with IBM, Sun Microsystems, SAP, Hewlett-Packard, Siemens AG, Cisco and recently Autodesk (IDG News Service). Interestingly Microsoft agreed to share with Sun even though they are a direct competitor and with AutoDesk even though they have far fewer patents than Microsoft. It appears that large companies would prefer to avoid expensive and uncertain litigation rather than assert their own intellectual property rights. Indeed, being able to negotiate such agreements is a major reason that companies file "defensive" patents. |
So, yes patent and protect, but then share among those who have much.
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C0ckney
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Big Up The Macedonian Massive
Apr 2000
time: 05:19
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patents in europe are regulated by the EPC (european patent convention) of 1973, this sets out what is required for an invention to be patentable and the things which are excluded from patentability. software patents can be obtained, but not for things which are computer programs 'as such'. this area involves a lot of difficult concepts, so it's not surprising that many people (like asher) don't understand what protection can be obtained via patents, what protection can be obtained through copyrights and the reasons for this.
if anyone wants to understand the concepts behind this area of law i would suggest reading the cases of viacom's application (1987) and PBS partnership (pension benefit system) (2001), as well as the EPC itself.
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C0ckney
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Big Up The Macedonian Massive
Apr 2000
time: 05:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Asher
I don't think it's right to patent a computer program, but it's acceptable and standard practice to patent innovative and unique methods that were R&Ded. If you look closely I never mentioned "computer program" once, which is the realm of copyrights and not patents. |
sorry i must have misread your post, but you seemed to be implying that companies could not protect their research into software in europe, which isn't the case. i'll be the first to admit that i know very little about the technical aspects of 'software' and 'computer programs', but aren't they one and the same thing?
companies can protect their inventions in this area, but not to the extent that they can in the US, the requirments are different. i suppose it's an issue of personal preference, i think the current european approach is better than the american one and this new law would have made it easier to obtain software patents, it would certainly have changed the criteria, so to me it's a good thing that it has been defeated.
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C0ckney
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Big Up The Macedonian Massive
Apr 2000
time: 05:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Asher
It's my understanding that the term "software patents" is misleading -- most of the "software patents" end up being things like an algorithm being designed to tackle a certain problem. |
mathemactical algorithms are excluded from patentability.
in europe you can't patent computer programs (which can be taken to mean software) 'as such', the exception to this is where the program has a 'technical effect' (this is defined, though imperfectly, in cases like viacom's application). it's not the easiest thing in the world to put into laymens terms, but the way i would put it is that is if you develop a program which makes a computer go faster then that is patentable, but the use that extra speed is put to is not patentable. another example - if your program makes mathematical calculations at a faster rate than a human could or another program could then this is not patentable, because it is merely a method of performing a 'mental act'.
this contrats with the US, where pretty much anything to do with software can be patented (state street bank & trust co. v signature financial group, inc, 1998). one click shopping and the like are in fact business method patents, which are very closely related to software patents (by virtue of the fact that pretty much all business method patents are computer based), which are again allowable in US, but not in europe.
the proposed law would instead of excluding computer programs and then making exceptions, have allowed software patents but with exclusions, this would obviously widen the scope for these sort of patents.
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aneeshm
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Indore , Madhya Pradesh
Jul 2001
time: 10:49
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@ Asher
I agree that this is a good move , but our reasons differ . One is because the current system in Europe is fine - no nonsense like progress bars , one-click shopping , the ifnot statement , and others like that are patentable there . Neither is pure maths .
I think that the crux of the debate is whether an applied science which is purely theoretical in nature is similar to normal engineering - whether mathermatical ideas are inventions of discoveries . America says inventions , Europe says discoveries .
And yeah , the business going to Europe will be much more than what little they lose . And most of the stuff oursourced to India is back-end stuff , but the R&D slice of the pie , though thin , is growing .
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06-07-2005 18:00
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