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The Case against Literary (and Software) Patents
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| Imagine the outcry if the courts were to legalize patents on English prose.
| Suddenly, you could get a "literary patent" on novels employing a particular
| kind of plot twist, on news stories using a particular interview technique,
| or on legal briefs using a particular style of argumentation. Publishing
| books, papers, or articles would expose authors to potential liability for
| patent infringement. To protect themselves, writers would be forced to send
| their work to a patent lawyer before publication and to re-write passages
| found to be infringing a literary patent.
|
| [...]
|
| The patent at issue in Bilski is not a software patent; it is a "business
| method" patent that claims a strategy for hedging against financial risk. But
| the case is being closely watched for its effects on the software patent
| issue. Patented business methods are often implemented in software; for
| example, a key decision on the patentability of software, State Street Bank
| v. Signature Financial Group, involved a software-implemented business
| method. And the standard articulated by the Federal Circuit in Bilski, known
| as the "machine-or-transformation test" has been used by the Patent Office in
| recent months to invalidate several software patents. The Supreme Court could
| ratify the Federal Circuit's mildly restrictive standard, or it could
| articulate its own standard that is either more or less restrictive of
| patents on software.
|
| Reiterating that software cannot be patented would be a dramatic step, but it
| would be the right one. Supporters of software patents insist that barring
| software patents would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But it's
| not clear there was a baby in there to begin with. Empirical research
| suggests that software patents are dramatically less effective at promoting
| innovation than other categories of patents, producing more litigation and
| smaller revenues for innovators.
`----
http://www.cato.org/tech/tk/090828-tk.html
Most software companies infringe patents
,----[ Quote ]
| In a report, Cato denizen Timothy Lee compared patents on software and
| business processes to patents on English prose.
|
| [...]
|
| Since patent protection was first extended to software in the 1980s, it is
| difficult or impossible to create any significant software without infringing
| one or more patents. With tens of thousands of new software patents granted
| every year, and no effective indexing method for software patents, there is
| no cost-effective way to determine which patents cover any piece of software.
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1531874/most-software-companies-infringe-patents
Recent:
In tune with the needs of the EU's new pirates
,----[ Quote ]
| The GNU General Public Licence for software was, he says, the main subject of
| conversation between developers who put their work ethics before their own or
| their business' interests.
|
| Before he knew it, Josefsson was part of a movement which claims to be saving
| the world from corporate control. In 2002 he became one of the leading
| opponents of the EU's software patent directive. He co-founded the Swedish
| chapter of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) with
| EngstrÃm and, without any knowledge of how to lobby politicians, he
| spearheaded the campaign against the directive.
|
| âWhen the directive was proposed in 2002, I and many others started following
| this from scratch,â he says. âWe were computer programmers, students or
| entrepreneurs, and we knew nothing about how the EU worked.
|
| âIt eventually developed into a grassroots movement equal in strength to the
| business associations and lobby groups you normally find in Brussels, to
| those whose views are normally heard and listened to,â he says.
|
| Patent protest
|
| The movement grew out of the blogosphere â or more correctly, Josefsson says,
| out of the âmailsphere' â and the organising element was no individual or
| organisation, but a classical self-generating political process.
|
| âIt was like seeing a catastrophe about to happen. Imagine a bus about to
| drive into a crowd of people; you want to stop the bus before it happens. We
| didn't have time to launch a proper organisation and we never asked questions
| about how we should do things. We just had to do it.â
|
| By early 2005, more than 400,000 people had signed a petition against the
| software patent directive and later that year it was rejected by the
| Parliament.
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http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/in-tune-with-the-needs-of-the-eu-s-new-pirates/65659.aspx
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