European Patents Update

scojones

We're buggered lads. It's over

Article taken from http://news.ft.com/cms/s/329cb864-e1bb-11d9-9460-00000e2511c8.html

T groups win EU ruling on patents
By Tobias Buck in Brussels
Published: June 20 2005 19:57 | Last updated: June 20 2005 19:57

EU softareBig technology groups such as Nokia, Siemens and Philips scored a significant victory on Monday night, when a key European parliament committee rejected plans that would have curtailed their ability to win patents for their inventions.

In a narrow and keenly awaited decision, the parliament's legal affairs committee threw out proposals for a sweeping overhaul of a controversial European Union proposal known as the software patents directive.

Most importantly, they voted down the overwhelming majority of amendments that would have made it more difficult for companies to win patent protection for software-related inventions.

The vote still has to be confirmed by the entire parliament in early July, although MEPs tend to follow the decision ofthe committee. EU member states would then have to give their approval for the draftlaw, though no-one expects national governments to put up resistance.

Mark MacGann, president of Eicta, an association of technology groups that support patents, said: “European industry is satisfied with the outcome of today's vote. We will now urge the entire parliament to follow suit. It is a pretty good result.”

Eicta's members include companies such as EADS, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, SAP, Siemens, Sony and Sun.

Monday's vote marks a turning point in the protracted battle over the law, which has split the software industry and sparked severe recriminations.

Big information technology companies are in favour of a generous patent regime that allows companies to register patents for a wide range of software-related inventions. They argue that intellectual property rights provide incentives for companies to innovate and invest in research and development.

Businesses with a valuable portfolio of patents also fear that a more restrictive regime would remove patent protection from possibly tens of thousands of existing inventions.

But their opponents many of which are smaller software companies or individual developers have argued that patents tend to hurt smaller market players by concentrating patents in the hands of a few big groups.

Smaller companies are particularly concerned that the new directive might allow patents on “pure” software simple lines of code that make up, for example, Microsoft's Windows operating system. Some argue that such patents could severely restrict innovation because they would prevent developers from building on widely used lines of codeto create new applications and programmes.

Though the draft directive explicitly excludes patents on pure software, critics feel the proposal's language is too hazy to exclude that threat. A large number of members of the European parliament had previously voiced similar fears and many had believed yesterday's vote would go differently.

cregser

This is taken from a comment to the same story on slashdot.com which also had a link to a critique on software patents.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/20/2210216&from=rss

I've never seen the patent concept put in such easy-to-understand terms before. I didn't need it explained to me (of course :-)), but after reading it, I had better ideas on how to explain it to others.

OTOH, it might be more accessible if he'd used a more accessible example. The example appeals more to the French and francophiles, and fans of great literature. I'd apply it to sandwiches. Imagine if every sandwich shop had to pay the Earl of Sandwich $1 for every sandwich they sold (and then had to pass that cost on to the consumer in the form of higher prices). Then EoS sues McDonalds, as a hamburger is actually a hamburger sandwich, and since he's getting $1 a sandwich from Akbar's Gas n' Munch on 135th Street, he's suing McDonalds for $100 billion.

But the guy who patented combining cheese and meat is suing McDonalds. And so is the guy who patented the extending sandwich flavor by adding condiments. And so is the guy who patented the idea of conveying french fries to customers in a cardboard container. And so is the guy who patented a method of conveying liquid from a distributing nozzle to the customer by means of a cyllindrical shaped device open at only one end (i.e. a freakin' CUP). And yes, the cup, and mayonnaise, and cheeseburgers, and fries in a cardboard carton all seem like obvious inventions with lots of prior art. But we've seen such silliness get through the patent office in America.

Don't think the government is going to put the money in place to keep some overworked, underpaid patent examiner from approving a patent on cheeseburgers! And once the patent is granted, getting it revoked or dismissed is so expensive that every little burger stand will pay the guy who got the cheeseburger patent $10,000 a year because they don't have the $10,000,000 to fund the challenge.

When granted for truly original inventions within a certain limited scope, patents are a wonderful thing that encourage innovation. But that's in theory. In practice, they're something else entirely.

Don't let the patent lawyers and the politicians they lease paint rosy pictures of theory over the cesspit of practice. Don't let software patents pass in Europe.

- Greg

When he says "But that's in theory. In practice, they're something else entirely." I was reminded of what is so often said about communism - that it worked in theory but not in practice.

Are we heading down a slippery slope?

BinaryR

well lads lets not sit there, if you feel like doing something about it check out:
http://www.ifso.ie/projects/swpats.html

If you want to contact your local M.E.P. then check this page:
http://www.europarl.ie/meps/index.html

heres an interesting open letter from the european free software foundation:
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/letter-20050606.en.html

check it out if you wanna help, ive already sent out an email ill post here and let you know if theres anything interesting in the reply.

Cheers
- BR

ambro25

about time the Directive was either passed as originally drafted, or sh*t-canned altogether.

oslin

The European Parliament this morning
voted to reject the draft directive on computer-implemented inventions.

For software patents: 14
Abstain: 18
Against: 648

Capt'n Midnight

linkie - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/06/eu_bins_swpat/

ambro25

Good. Now, everybody's a winnahrrr

jmcc

ambro25 wrote:

Good. Now, everybody's a winnahrrr

Until the next time. But today's result really showed up those people in ISA and ICT Ireland who claimed that the Irish software industry was pro-patent.

Regards...jmcc

mr_angry

Yes!

ambro25

jmcc wrote:

But today's result really showed up those people in ISA and ICT Ireland who claimed that the Irish software industry was pro-patent.

Don't get you, sorry...

mr_angry

Perhaps this article is what jmcc was referring to...?

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single5025

jmcc

ambro25 wrote:

Don't get you, sorry...

Mr_angry is right. Basically what has been going on for the last few months is that the pro-software patents lobby via ISA and ICT Ireland (organisations that do not represent the Irish software industry despite what they claim) have been planting stories in the Irish media claiming that the Irish software industry is pro-swpats. Most of the time, they've had it easy as sites many sites and publications will run a press release without really reading it. Siliconrepublic.com has provided a more balanced view point.

Regards...jmcc

ambro25

jmcc wrote:

Basically what has been going on for the last few months (...) Siliconrepublic.com has provided a more balanced view point.

Ah - OK! Thank you for the linkie as well. Interesting, but now moot: the 'industry' is quite happy with the end-result.

superhoops1973

interesting read..


http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,1540984,00.html

ambro25

Software Directive/EU Constitution - that's a strange parallel to draw, and a bit of a stretch at that, tbh.

The EU Constitution would affect all European Citizens in a pretty fundamental way. The Software Directive only a very small proportion in a wholly incidental manner.

Drawing upon issues arising with the first as a political argument to foster support against whatever form the second might someday come out as (not that it will anytime soon), and doing so to justify the position, is thoughtless haranguing of the worst ilk.

Of course the industry decided to scrap the Directive, since it was going to be amended again - better the current situation than ending up with a camel designed by a committee from which only legal practitionners would profit, hence making it even more difficult for EU businesses to patent their software than it currently is, forcing them to compete with US businesses with an arm and a half tied behind their back.

A tiny bit of business acumen would have been needed to have understood this at the time, never mind now.

I support(ed) the Directive, by reason of its much-wider ranging implications for EU businesses than what some misinformed programmers argued, but voted no to the Constitution - draw your own conclusions

democrates

Patents were originally introduced because inventors kept their discoveries or innovations secret, and the new law was designed to encourage them to share those ideas so that society as a whole would benefit. Legislators knew what was right and wrong back then.

What has happened since is that the theory of 'Intellectual Property' espoused by Ayn Rand, the CATO Institute and others has been used by big business to establish the idea in law that the interests of the originator are some divine right, so society as a whole can lump it.

The worst part is that the money-men driving this agenda aren't simply trying to make an honest living, they are out to stop good people from helping others because a gift to their mind means profits foregone.

Thus the law which is supposed to be a means to one end, justice, has been perverted by these vested interests to perpetrate injustice. Swpats are merely one more law to accelerate the concentration of wealth with the few at the expense of the many. Funny how those libertarians only seem to defend the rights of the elite.

I for one will not recognise any law that leads to injustice, in this case swpats that would take away my freedom to code and share with my fellow man as I see fit. That's my religion. It may mean prison time down the line, but so be it.

Not all countries are falling for the BS thankfully, three cheers for Norway. They see clearly that software is a resource required by the public, private, and NGO sectors, and that swpats would mean an added cost, retarding productivity.

In time the cost-effects of swpats would accumulate, for the public sector this would lead to higher taxes, lower pensions, less public services and so on. In the case of NGO's, money required for swpats would be diverted from saving the lives of infants dying from starvation. So well done Norway.

Ireland of course is the number one exporter of software on the planet thanks to being practically a tax haven for M$ et al, so we can expect powerful lobbying to receptive politicians. But I'm optimistic, thanks to growing democracy and social awareness, we'll achieve a just society in the end.

ambro25

A few half-truths and misconceptions in an otherwise very worthy post, democrates

democrates wrote:

Patents were originally introduced because inventors kept their discoveries or innovations secret, and the new law was designed to encourage them to share those ideas so that society as a whole would benefit. Legislators knew what was right and wrong back then.

But trade secrets and their statutory embodiment as a form of IPR (in some jurisdictions, notably the US) remain to this day, in any technological environment. Only, they are worthless in a technological environment such as software, in which competition will freely engage in decompiling, even though statutorily prevented from doing so.

democrates wrote:

What has happened since is that the theory of 'Intellectual Property' espoused by Ayn Rand, the CATO Institute and others has been used by big business to establish the idea in law that the interests of the originator are some divine right, so society as a whole can lump it.

If such was the case, democrates, do you not think that the term (20 years) of patent rights would have been revised by now, or at least be under consideration? There is no such concept, literally or figuratively, as the 'divine rights' of inventors (or creators, where copyright is concerned), since IPRs relate to the law of Property and instruments for same - legal paradigms and their real-life embodiments in Statutes are geared so that the work of an author can be exploited/marketed, not so that it can prevail above any other interests.

democrates wrote:

The worst part is that the money-men driving this agenda aren't simply trying to make an honest living, they are out to stop good people from helping others because a gift to their mind means profits foregone.

You are foregoing, amongst many others, the "repayment of R&D" (=investment) dimension, here. Programmers, much like anybody else, don't live on love, code and fresh water. It's a give and take situation, like any other business: the money man gives you money to code, the money man wants what you code.

Since you're in a position to take with you the knowledge base acquired at the expense of the money man further to the completion of the deal, it's only natural that the money man would not want you to go peddle it, turnkey/ready made to the best offerer, willy-nilly. Sounds logical to me, but maybe that's because I'm siding with reason...sorry, real life... sorry, I mean - the money men

democrates wrote:

Thus the law which is supposed to be a means to one end, justice, has been perverted by these vested interests to perpetrate injustice. Swpats are merely one more law to accelerate the concentration of wealth with the few at the expense of the many. Funny how those libertarians only seem to defend the rights of the elite.

IPRs have absolutely nothing to do with justice. Never have. They were brought up to further commercial interest of Venitian business men in the 15th century or so (well, insofar as patents are concerned) - IPR has always been a law based upon, and articulated for, commercial purposes. See you own comment in the opening paragraph.

The only notion of 'justice', where IPRs are concerned, is introduced by paternity rights in copyrights and patents (right to be named as inventor, to be named as author of a copyrighted work, right to act upon defamation of the work, etc.).

Moreover, you're making some fairly sweeping generalisations in this particular paragraph, that would not stand to close scrutiny of example cases where "swpats" have made all the difference between an abortive start-up swallowed by the system and one that's gone on from 15 or so to hundreds and employing a fairly sizeable contingent of programmers.

democrates wrote:

I for one will not recognise any law that leads to injustice, in this case swpats that would take away my freedom to code and share with my fellow man as I see fit. That's my religion. It may mean prison time down the line, but so be it.

A laudable position. I don't know if calling it 'religion' is not a tad overdramatic, here. I do not think that we'd be looking at prison term for wilful infringement, either, but you may have to learn to live of loving, coding and fresh water in due course...

democrates wrote:

Not all countries are falling for the BS thankfully, three cheers for Norway. They see clearly that software is a resource required by the public, private, and NGO sectors, and that swpats would mean an added cost, retarding productivity. In time the cost-effects of swpats would accumulate, for the public sector this would lead to higher taxes, lower pensions, less public services and so on. In the case of NGO's, money required for swpats would be diverted from saving the lives of infants dying from starvation. So well done Norway.

Are you telling me that all of Norway's public/NGO/private sectors run on Linux and GPL'd 'true-OS' apps? (careful now, as I am aware of numerous OS apps for which swpats have been applied for)

Good job their trade balance/workforce profile do not require any inward ICT investment.

democrates wrote:

Ireland of course is the number one exporter of software on the planet thanks to being practically a tax haven for M$ et al, so we can expect powerful lobbying to receptive politicians. But I'm optimistic, thanks to growing democracy and social awareness, we'll achieve a just society in the end.

A laudable goal, fairly utopian in many respects but laudable still... Ireland *might* be the "number one exporter of software on the planet", but I believe that's down to quite favourable corporate tax rates, and nothing to do with swpats at all. Ireland is no more of a soft touch than the UK or Europe, and if you're going to construct an argument to the contrary, at least please have the decency to do your homework and consult the (public) Register of Patents to determine for yourself the ratio of applications for swpats to the number of granted swpats - you'll be surprised

democrates

But trade secrets and their statutory embodiment as a form of IPR (in some jurisdictions, notably the US) remain to this day, in any technological environment. Only, they are worthless in a technological environment such as software, in which competition will freely engage in decompiling, even though statutorily prevented from doing so.

It is a challenge for the future, countries that don't want to compete on labour costs see the need to develop a knowledge economy, and the temptation is to simply engage in a land grab of knowledge that can be licensed out, hence the US copyright and patent offices being so ready to grant ownership rights on anything that moves.

But I think that's the wrong tack, the innovative application of freely available knowledge is where I think rewards ought to go. I can accept the idea of temporary patents on things which would not be within financial reach of the individual such as drugs or anything else which costs a fortune to develop, but not patents on software or other things which individuals can readily supply to society.

There is no such concept, literally or figuratively, as the 'divine rights' of inventors (or creators, where copyright is concerned), since IPRs relate to the law of Property and instruments for same - legal paradigms and their real-life embodiments in Statutes are geared so that the work of an author can be exploited/marketed, not so that it can prevail above any other interests.

Ok I'm not literally saying divine rights, I should have specified 'as if they were' :rolleyes:. Swpat law protects the interest of the owner, not society. Doesn't it thereby set the owners interests above societies?

The law for swpats goes beyond copyright to prevent others from writing the same code independantly. It is one thing to say that this is my program and you can't just take it without my permission, it is quite another to say you can't write a program like mine, you must pay me a patent licensing fee. That to my mind means the swpats owners interests would legally prevail over my interests, ie my freedom to code and share.

You are foregoing, amongst many others, the "repayment of R&D" (=investment) dimension, here. Programmers, much like anybody else, don't live on love, code and fresh water. It's a give and take situation, like any other business: the money man gives you money to code, the money man wants what you code.

Since you're in a position to take with you the knowledge base acquired at the expense of the money man further to the completion of the deal, it's only natural that the money man would not want you to go peddle it, turnkey/ready made to the best offerer, willy-nilly. Sounds logical to me, but maybe that's because I'm siding with reason...sorry, real life... sorry, I mean - the money men

The point was not foregone, I simply didn't bring it up. But now that it's raised... It's an accurate observation that the body corporate and it's owners are protected by copyright and swpat law, not the originators of the work. Otherwise it would be the programmers themselves who had the rights as the authors.

In fairness the entrepreneur is usually the one who takes the greater risk, like Bill Gates dropping out of college to start the company, whereas the programmers could more easily find another job and have no business debts if the venture crashed and burned. Many companies offer a share in the profits and/or stock options, and this is welcome.

In the long term I would see the the distinction between owners and employees further blurring, with a greater recognition of the risk to employee livelihood versus say the risk to those with wealth to invest that they can afford to lose. Compare a redundant programmer or failed entrepreneur losing their family home with a venture capitalist losing 10% of their portfolio for example.

Even given entreprenurial risk, I don't accept that we should go as far as legally preventing others from doing the same. The fact that patents are so expensive to research and procure puts them almost exclusively in the domain of the rich who can patent rings around themselves and block start-ups before they begin. One could argue that this would force entrepreneurs to innovate more, but not if swpats infest the code terrain, whereupon it will become increasingly difficult to code any kind of solution without encountering swpat costs, fine for those who can afford them, but the small startups would be bunched. That flies in the face of the principle of equal opportunity.

There is the question of how programmers make a living in a GPL world. The answer seems to me to be that there will always be money in implementing and supporting free solutions and in customising new solutions to give a business an edge over competitors. In fact as the body of freely available software builds, there is more to implement and support, and the race to innovate is accelerated, all good.

IPRs have absolutely nothing to do with justice. Never have.

Though this may sadly be the practice, I could not disagree more strongly with that as a principle. This is the first principle I was referring to, jurisprudence holds that justice is the obligation that the legal system has to the citizen or society as a whole. Commercial law should not be a special exemption, and in the case of swpats I believe it fails the jurisprudence test by allowing swpat owners to restrict my freedom to code and share with society as I see fit.

A just society is what we elect legislators to achieve, when the law fails to achieve that aim, it ought to be changed. Once slavery was legal and plantation owners claimed their businesses would not be viable without it. Though not as an extreme an example as swpats, individual freedom is still the more fundamental right and should not be sacrificed for the benefit of a few. Sorry if this all sounds preachy, that's not the intent, no disrespect, I'm just describing my position.

Moreover, you're making some fairly sweeping generalisations in this particular paragraph, that would not stand to close scrutiny of example cases where "swpats" have made all the difference between an abortive start-up swallowed by the system and one that's gone on from 15 or so to hundreds and employing a fairly sizeable contingent of programmers.

It's easy to conclude that in the early days of swpats, but the problem will only become apparent down the road when the number of them increases and the cost of ensuring new code is legally compliant becomes prohibitive to all but the wealthy.

Are you telling me that all of Norway's public/NGO/private sectors run on Linux and GPL'd 'true-OS' apps? (careful now, as I am aware of numerous OS apps for which swpats have been applied for)

Good job their trade balance/workforce profile do not require any inward ICT investment.

From the original post:

Meyer called on all government departments to have plans in place for use of Open Source software by the end of 2006. The “eNorge 2009” plan will provide all citizens with an electronic ID and personal home page.

So no, I'm not saying that. I never expected to see a magic changeover of all systems the day after the announcement, you'd be right to reject that interpretation (I may be eccentric, but not completely mad, yet anyway). I note also he mentions open source rather than free software.

A laudable goal, fairly utopian in many respects but laudable still... Ireland *might* be the "number one exporter of software on the planet", but I believe that's down to quite favourable corporate tax rates, and nothing to do with swpats at all. Ireland is no more of a soft touch than the UK or Europe, and if you're going to construct an argument to the contrary, at least please have the decency to do your homework and consult the (public) Register of Patents to determine for yourself the ratio of applications for swpats to the number of granted swpats - you'll be surprised

I agree on the point about the corporate tax rates as I referred to Ireland as 'practically a tax haven'.
Even if I had the resources to extrapolate the historical record of swpats in order to demonstrate their future impact, would you agree with my expectations of the trends? Maybe you would, but as George Bush and his friends denied global warming for years despite mountains of scientific evidence, I wouldn't see that as the best use of my time. I've no objection to anyone else doing so in an attempt to support their position
Besides, I was simply anticipating there that the policy position our leaders bring to the EU table whenever the issue is debated will be in favour of big software business interests, given our country is so invested with them.
Enjoyable discourse btw ambro25, I like your robust style.

ambro25

democrates wrote:

It is a challenge for the future, countries that don't want to compete on labour costs see the need to develop a knowledge economy, and the temptation is to simply engage in a land grab of knowledge that can be licensed out, hence the US copyright and patent offices being so ready to grant ownership rights on anything that moves.

I think you will find, perhaps with asking your friendly neighbour-Patent Attorney, that the USPTO is not so much of a soft touch anymore either. Though US Statutes do not place any bar on patentable subject-matter (a very big difference with Europe), they do nonetheless require that an invention be reduced to practice in a field of art/technology - hence, no (more?) US patents for 'pure' methods of doing business.

And their Examiners must have been told to step on the hydraulic brakes, because the days of 1-year-from-filing-an-application-to-grant are well and truly gone, with refusals dramatically on the increase where Patent applications are concerned.

Naturally, none of the above applies to copyright (which exists/arises automatically), and the only US/Europe difference is that you can 'register' your copyright in the US at the Library of Congress (opened to Europeans or anyone else as well, should they wish to do so).

democrates wrote:

But I think that's the wrong tack, the innovative application of freely available knowledge is where I think rewards ought to go.

But you cannot protect innovative application by patent - such 'applications' would be known as business methods, and only the US allows the patenting of those.

So, respecting your position but placing it in a real-world context: based on the same "freely available knowledge", US businesses would be able to stop any foreign business from competing in the US (that's a 'bad' thing, where national economies of pretty much any developed country is concerned, even that of Ireland) and keep trying/testing/throwing $ at the Patent Systems the world over to get their way and stop/royalty-tax national businesses doing business in their own jurisdiction.

democrates wrote:

I can accept the idea of temporary patents on things which would not be within financial reach of the individual such as drugs or anything else which costs a fortune to develop, but not patents on software or other things which individuals can readily supply to society.

Erm... with respect, not all individuals can code as well as you are (/seem to be) able to. A small problem with your position -if I may, of course- is that you do not appear to see the grey between the white/black extremes of your argument - by way of example:
(1) Could I code some HTML for my personal web page? Probably. Could someone get a patent on that? No.
(2) Could I code some C# for processing pixels of movie frames for special effects? Seriously doubt it. Could someone get a patent on that? Well, depends on whether there's any novelty in that 'pixel processing', so possibly. (NOTE: absolutely not "automatically").

democrates wrote:

Ok I'm not literally saying divine rights, I should have specified 'as if they were' :rolleyes:. Swpat law protects the interest of the owner, not society. Doesn't it thereby set the owners interests above societies?

Not quite. It is a trade-off between the owner AND society, as in the first paragraph of your first post in this thread: "Mr Business, I give you an exclusive right to work this invention for the next 20 years, you tell the world today what it is and how it works (so that (i) your competitor can see where he needs to focus his own R&D efforts, (ii) you are aware that your competitor is aware of your tech developments so you yourself, Mr Business, have to keep pushing the envelope and so on, and so on...)".

democrates wrote:

The law for swpats goes beyond copyright to prevent others from writing the same code independantly. It is one thing to say that this is my program and you can't just take it without my permission, it is quite another to say you can't write a program like mine, you must pay me a patent licensing fee. That to my mind means the swpats owners interests would legally prevail over my interests, ie my freedom to code and share..

You *could* go ask/present your point to the ex-employees of Navitaire, who lost their jobs after Easyjet pulled the plug on their online store interface, only to have it completed... cough...sorry... asked a different softco to provide an online store interface that turned out 'remarkably similar' to that of Navitaire. Oh, and don't think of equity or redress: Navitaire lost their copyright infringement action. Apparently, inverting 0s and 1s in a line of code is enough to provide distinctiveness to a work for escaping infringement ([sarcasm] it's not "copying" for the purpose of copyright infringement, you see, since it's different [/sarcasm]).

democrates wrote:

The point was not foregone, I simply didn't bring it up. But now that it's raised... It's an accurate observation that the body corporate and it's owners are protected by copyright and swpat law, not the originators of the work. Otherwise it would be the programmers themselves who had the rights as the authors..

They do in the US (no Statutory provisions in respect of 'employee inventions, only Federal case law, which varies from US State to US State) and programmers have to assign ('sell') the invention to their employers. To a (fairly large) extent, they do in Europe as well.

But this particular point has nothing to do with the debate at hand (SW Patents) , being as it is entirely dependent upon individual circumstances that are equally applicable whether you're a programmer, a biologist, a physicist or a mechanical engineer.

democrates, I will continue addressing the rest of your post later, but can I already thank you now for making this thread rather interesting, after all...

democrates

I think you will find, perhaps with asking your friendly neighbour-Patent Attorney, that the USPTO is not so much of a soft touch anymore either. Though US Statutes do not place any bar on patentable subject-matter (a very big difference with Europe), they do nonetheless require that an invention be reduced to practice in a field of art/technology - hence, no (more?) US patents for 'pure' methods of doing business.

The constraints of utility, novelty, and nonobviousness on swpat applications also look good on the face of it, but although ideas cannot in theory be patented, what do you call Amazons(TM) 'One-Click'(TM) patent? That was the turning point and effectively the uspto now allows the patenting of what is an idea in all but official name.

And their Examiners must have been told to step on the hydraulic brakes, because the days of 1-year-from-filing-an-application-to-grant are well and truly gone, with refusals dramatically on the increase where Patent applications are concerned.

As for everything being ship shape at uspto:
Federal Computer Week

"The time examiners have to review a patent application has not increased since 1976, even though examiners have many more complex cases involving, for example, computing innovations and biotechnology, than they did then, Stern said.
Those are harder cases," he said. "The amount of prior art that has to be searched has gotten greater. The number of pages of specifications that somebody has to read is greater. The number of claims that an employee has to consider is much larger than it used to be. Those things all make it take more time. What has really happened is that people have been forced to do the job faster, and as a consequence, they've been forced to cut corners."

Jason Schultz, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who specializes in intellectual property issues, said the GAO report officially confirmed what he already knew about USPTO and its patent examiners.
"The incredible surge of patent applications, especially in the software and Internet business method arena, is just crushing them, and the management problems are rising to the surface with greater visibility for those reasons," Schultz said. Under current rules, "where anything under the sun is patentable, it puts an unbelievable amount of pressure on the patent office," he added.

This cutting corners impacts the quality of awarded patents, and particularly when the applicant is well capitalised the path of least resistance for an examiner is to grant, unless they've luckily stumbled upon iron-clad prior art or another reason to reject that can defeat the applicants lawyers. The workload may also explain your observation that grants are taking longer. The long term trend can only be more swpats, and when the uspto achieves greater efficiency these will accelerate.

A person who wants to write a program would in swpat theory search patents first and then code. But let alone is this difficult because they are in legalese, pending patents are secret, so you could think you are in the clear and wind up being sued anyway. The nail in the coffin is that in the real world lawyers advise against looking at patents because you then run the risk of triple damages for 'wilful infringement'.
The mere threat of a lawsuit by an swpat owner is enough to get license fees out of a poorer competitor who can't afford to go to court, even if the patent is absurd and has never been proven in court.

Even if/when the quality issue is addressed, the stronger the case that the software being patented is useful to society the stronger my opposition to having my freedom to offer such solutions to my fellow man sacrificed in favour of a swpat monopoly.

But you cannot protect innovative application by patent - such 'applications' would be known as business methods, and only the US allows the patenting of those.

So, respecting your position but placing it in a real-world context: based on the same "freely available knowledge", US businesses would be able to stop any foreign business from competing in the US (that's a 'bad' thing, where national economies of pretty much any developed country is concerned, even that of Ireland) and keep trying/testing/throwing $ at the Patent Systems the world over to get their way and stop/royalty-tax national businesses doing business in their own jurisdiction.

I'm not suggesting patent protection for software applications either, though I don't have a problem with that, eg if MS Excel was patented so what, so long as the ideas within it are not individually patented such as topological sorting as happens with swpats. But borrowing your scenario, the enforcement of US swpat restrictions the world over and the trend of patent offices worldwide to gravitate towards the US model is a further reason why I reject them. Nothing against the US, it'll be India and China down the line doing this concept colonialsim, just wait 'til they get into gear on this.

Erm... with respect, not all individuals can code as well as you are (/seem to be) able to. A small problem with your position -if I may, of course- is that you do not appear to see the grey between the white/black extremes of your argument - by way of example:
(1) Could I code some HTML for my personal web page? Probably. Could someone get a patent on that? No.
(2) Could I code some C# for processing pixels of movie frames for special effects? Seriously doubt it. Could someone get a patent on that? Well, depends on whether there's any novelty in that 'pixel processing', so possibly. (NOTE: absolutely not "automatically").

Even if you don't code, you should have the freedom to, and your children, and grandchildren. Swpats will increasingly oppress that freedom. Could a bright grandchild of yours in the future afford to fund a patent suit in court? The other aspect is that if I can't write code and share it, all the non-programmers will be robbed of the option of using it.

Not quite. It is a trade-off between the owner AND society, as in the first paragraph of your first post in this thread: "Mr Business, I give you an exclusive right to work this invention for the next 20 years, you tell the world today what it is and how it works (so that (i) your competitor can see where he needs to focus his own R&D efforts, (ii) you are aware that your competitor is aware of your tech developments so you yourself, Mr Business, have to keep pushing the envelope and so on, and so on...)".

20 years is madness given the pace of software innovation we should aspire to. The main constraint on the number of swpats granted will increasingly be the cost of procurement and risk of being sued, both exacerbated as the number of swpats rises. This doesn't tend to bother the big players who enter into cross-licencing agreements as a kind of détente, but it presents an ever-growing entry barrier to smaller innovators, thus reducing overall innovation and increasing the cost of solutions. That is a net loss to society in favour of the swpat owners monopoly.

You *could* go ask/present your point to the ex-employees of Navitaire, who lost their jobs after Easyjet pulled the plug on their online store interface, only to have it completed... cough...sorry... asked a different softco to provide an online store interface that turned out 'remarkably similar' to that of Navitaire. Oh, and don't think of equity or redress: Navitaire lost their copyright infringement action. Apparently, inverting 0s and 1s in a line of code is enough to provide distinctiveness to a work for escaping infringement ([sarcasm] it's not "copying" for the purpose of copyright infringement, you see, since it's different [/sarcasm]).

The case of navitaire losing their copyright case against easyjet is interesting from the point of vew of the letter vs the spirit of the law, and the issue of lawyer affordability vs access to justice. If that were a swpat issue, the fact that to make such property rights effective through recourse to the courts depends on having sufficient capital, demonstrates a survival barrier for innovators, and further reinforces the case against swpats.

In summary, swpats present entry and survival barriers to innovators thereby reducing overall innovation, create monopolies, are far too long-running for the field of software, create a risk of being sued for anyone writing a program, and oppress the freedom of the many to write code or use that which would have been freely written for them.