Software patents

superhoops1973

folks, if any one is interested in seeing healthy competition in the future, its important that the EU doesn't allow software patents.

http://news.com.com/Bill+Gates+and+other+communists/2010-1071_3-5576230.html?tag=nefd.pop

http://news.com.com/Open-source+honchos+trash+software+patents/2100-7344_3-5559647.html?tag=nl

http://www.ffii.org/

Lobby your local MEP / TD

The influence of large corporations cannot be underestimated. especially microsoft considering if is richer than many small countries combined

Jobs of thousands of software programmers is under threat from software patents and EU commissioners wined and dined by bill gates won't care

ressem

They are going to be allowed, because it'll be argued that ruling them out will be taking the nationally patented IP from the companies that already have them eg Fraunhofer (MP3).
Problems is that given an inch corporations and lawyers will take a mile as they do currently.

Take the US guidelines. You can't patent software, you can patent a process. But if your software manipulates real world data it becomes part of a patentable process. So I guess that open source writers could write libraries (eg lame) till the cows come home, but when tied into an external interface there's a risk of Fraunhofer looking for 50K+ annually from the developer.

To me it still sounds like charging someone for setting values for a,b,c in a quadratic eqn.

The european patent proposal looked even weaker.

Personally wouldn't object to software patents if they were more like Booker prizes. A limited monopoly granted for really advancing state of the art, competing against each other for the award, limited to two or three hundred a year, as was the original notion when patents were set up, before real world corruption intervened.

Better yet, a patent attempt involving software + common i/o device should be treated as pure software/algorithm.
None of this "Hold down mouse button for N seconds to cause a different OS effect" nonsense

ishnid

Very, very bad news today. Seems the Parliament are just as toothless we feared.

superhoops1973

ishnid wrote:

Very, very bad news today. Seems the Parliament are just as toothless we feared.

I used to be pro european, and in a way i still am. but the european commission - unelected members - well goverment appointees have to much control.

I will be voting NO to the european constitution

http://news.com.com/EU+Council+endorses+patent+bill/2100-1014_3-5602123.html?tag=nefd.top

pablo321

Heres a list of the MEPs for Ireland..

Lets get emailing.. Be polite, we need 2/3 to see this scrapped. I will not feel bad if I did everything I could to stop this..

Tthe link below will give you snail mail and telephone if your intrested:

http://www.europarl.ie/meps/inireland.html

Dublin
PROINSIAS DE ROSSA - LABOUR pderossa@europarl.eu.int
MARY LOU MC DONALD - SINN FÉIN mlmcdonald@europarl.eu.int
GAY MITCHELL TD - FINE GAEL gay.mitchell@oireachtas.ie
EOIN RYAN TD - FIANNA FÁIL eryan@europarl.eu.int

East
LIAM AYLWARD TD - FIANNA FÁIL laylward@europarl.eu.int
AVRIL DOYLE - FINE GAEL adoyle@europarl.eu.int
MAIREAD MCGUINNESS - FINE GAEL mmcguinness@europarl.eu.int

North West
MARIAN HARKIN TD - INDEPENDENT mharkin@europarl.eu.int
SEN. JIM HIGGINS - FINE GAEL jhiggins@europarl.eu.int
SEÁN Ó NEACHTAIN - FIANNA FÁIL soneachtain@europarl.eu.int

South
SIMON COVENEY TD - FINE GAEL scoveney@europarl.eu.int
BRIAN CROWLEY - FIANNA FAIL bcrowley@europarl.eu.int
KATHY SINNOTT - INDEPENDENT ksinnott@europarl.eu.int

North
JIM ALLISTER - DUP jallister@europarl.eu.int
BAIRBRE DE BRUN - SINN FÉIN bdebrun@europarl.eu.int
JIM NICHOLSON - UUP jnicholson@europarl.eu.int

superhoops1973

pablo321 wrote:

Heres a list of the MEPs for Ireland..

Lets get emailing.. Be polite, we need 2/3 to see this scrapped. I will not feel bad if I did everything I could to stop this..

Tthe link below will give you snail mail and telephone if your intrested:

http://www.europarl.ie/meps/inireland.html

Dublin
PROINSIAS DE ROSSA - LABOUR pderossa@europarl.eu.int
MARY LOU MC DONALD - SINN FÉIN mlmcdonald@europarl.eu.int
GAY MITCHELL TD - FINE GAEL gay.mitchell@oireachtas.ie
EOIN RYAN TD - FIANNA FÁIL eryan@europarl.eu.int

East
LIAM AYLWARD TD - FIANNA FÁIL laylward@europarl.eu.int
AVRIL DOYLE - FINE GAEL adoyle@europarl.eu.int
MAIREAD MCGUINNESS - FINE GAEL mmcguinness@europarl.eu.int

North West
MARIAN HARKIN TD - INDEPENDENT mharkin@europarl.eu.int
SEN. JIM HIGGINS - FINE GAEL jhiggins@europarl.eu.int
SEÁN Ó NEACHTAIN - FIANNA FÁIL soneachtain@europarl.eu.int

South
SIMON COVENEY TD - FINE GAEL scoveney@europarl.eu.int
BRIAN CROWLEY - FIANNA FAIL bcrowley@europarl.eu.int
KATHY SINNOTT - INDEPENDENT ksinnott@europarl.eu.int

North
JIM ALLISTER - DUP jallister@europarl.eu.int
BAIRBRE DE BRUN - SINN FÉIN bdebrun@europarl.eu.int
JIM NICHOLSON - UUP jnicholson@europarl.eu.int

cheers pablo.

i've emailed a couple. found marian harkin to be very helpful. well, i'm not sure what her position is on the subject, but was willing to reply to my correspondence anyway

i think charlie mccreevey is the guy with most power though. i wonder if there is any concidence to microsoft annoucing 100 crap jobs today for dublin. i cann't hide my dislike for that company in particular.

I'm going to write to my local cabinet minister. see if he'll raise it at the cabinet table. hopefully dinner isn't on bill gates :rolleyes:

Capt'n Midnight

superhoops1973 wrote:

i think charlie mccreevey is the guy with most power though. i wonder if there is any concidence to microsoft annoucing 100 crap jobs today for dublin. i cann't hide my dislike for that company in particular.

Heard someone say that Microsoft have let about 90 people go recently so it's really only 10 jobs. Well worth announcing in a city of 1,000,000 people.

superhoops1973

latest twist:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4335421.stm

scojones

This is bad... It's gona get passed and EU will follow in the US' footsteps. Absolutely terrible. It's like the nice treaty, they keep asking for a vote until they get the one they want.

superhoops1973

sjones wrote:

This is bad... It's gona get passed and EU will follow in the US' footsteps. Absolutely terrible. It's like the nice treaty, they keep asking for a vote until they get the one they want.

Big corporations won't touch each other, they basically say to each other - I won't sue you if you don't sue me.

sickening to be honest. this is an example of where shoe is on the other foot, but how often will this happen? no very often

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/10/apple_ipod_patent_lawsuits/

scojones

So correct me if i'm wrong here. Lets say someone patented the double-click.. And my business has 500 computers, all which run Linux. X.Org uses the double click in nautilus. Am I right in saying that I am breaking the law by using Linux, seeing as I have never even heard of the guy that patented the double-click..

This is crazy. How the hell are such generalized patents supposed to help innovation?

Taken from nosoftwarepatents.com
Copyright protects a particular expression of an idea. The piracy laws are one legal method of enforcing the copyright. With copyright anyone can write (say) a spreadsheet because, although it is not your idea, you have put the sweat, blood and tears into the effort of producing your own product.

Simplistically put, Microsoft has written Excel but I can write my own spreadsheet because they are different expressions of the same concept. However if I stick my label on Microsoft's box and start selling Excel on the basis that I own it then that's piracy.

With patents I could not write my own spreadsheet if someone else had patented it, no matter how much it differed from the patented version.

This is absolutely crazy. What can I do to help this? Who should I e-mail? Should we be protesting and passing flyers around our localities to educate the public?

superhoops1973

guess what we really need is a organisation for IT professionals that can lobby the goverments. we are not an organised group. farmers, nurses, publicans, legal profession are all organised.. be great if we were

scojones

It basically means Microsoft invented and owns the process whereby a word-processing document stored in a single XML file may be manipulated by applications that understand XML.

LINK: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10115247

It means if you write a document in Word and save it in an XML format, you have to have Microsoft’s permission to read it or change it.

pwd

http://www.peterdungan.net/software%20patents%20cartoon.jpg

http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/FightingSWPatentsCartoon

nadir

yeah its a disaster, I notice on the mplayer homepage http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/index.html
they even mention ireland.

guess what we really need is a organisation for IT professionals that can lobby the goverments. we are not an organised group. farmers, nurses, publicans, legal profession are all organised.. be great if we were

yeah, totally, maybe we should like get together, thing is we dont have much power, like teachers and nurses do, unless IT people who work for the government.

a few names come to mind.....

scojones

Email your MEP's. Signing petitions won't accomplish anything - it's too late for that. Email your MEP's and make sure they represent you. Look at my other thread on this "Software patents [update]"