From: Mustafa Akgul (akgul@Bilkent.EDU.TR)
Date: Sun 14 Sep 2003 - 18:28:15 EDT
Merhablar,
Bir suredir, linux-sohbet listesinde Omer Tayiz'in basi cektigi bir
tartisma surmektedir. LKD'nin bu konuda bir tavir almasi gundemde.
Bu nedenle dernek listesine tasidim.
asagida Yazilim Patent'leri bir yazi var.
Ne yapilmasi konusunda bu listenin gorusunu alabilirmiyiz ?
Saygilar
Mustafa Akgul
http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/TheDangerOfSoftwarePatentsToEurope
The Danger Of Software Patents To Europe
In the interests of multinationals and patent intermediaries, the
European Patent Office has drifted away from law. Now, the Commission
has proposed directive COM(2002)92, against the opinion of professionals
and economic studies, to cover for these irregularities.
The directive would allow software (currently under copyright) to be
patentable, contrary to the European Patent Convention (which wouldn't
be changed).
Some consequences of the directive COM(2002)92 as proposed by the
Commission:
More monopolies and oligopolies in software. Software of worse quality
at higher prices for consumers.
SMEs will be discriminated in front of big corporations, and some
business models will be discriminated in front of others (shareware, and
free software would be marginalized).
The EU would lose competitivity versus USA and Japan (which hold most of
the already granted software patents that the directive would legalise)
Software developers would lose productivity due to diversion of
effort/resources from technical issues to legal issues. Technical work
would be seriously burdened and unbounded legal uncertainity would
appear.
Harm to citizens' rights (freedom of expression and of being informed
for citizens, labor rights for programmers, free markets for
enterpreneurs and consumers)
Policies in information society, e-Europe, free software and IT R&D
would be compromised.
Software patents are unnecessary, counter productive, dangerous and
inconsistent:
1.- Unnecessary
Innovation is inherent in software, since it is the only way to compete
because "manufacturing" (producing copies), distribution and raw
materials are equally cheap for all players.
Free software shows there is enough incentive to innovate and disclose
software creations without patents.
Patents would protect software ideas and concepts. But in software ideas
are easy to get, since the formal models of computers are prefectly
known. The costly part is implementing these ideas in software that
works, and that is already protected by copyright.
None of the actors in software innovation is asking for software
patents, they're either ignorant of any move to enact them or already
opposing them. Only some patent offices, some patent lawyers, and some
of those big corporations that delegate opinion to their patent
departments are asking for software patents. This includes industry
associations dominated by big corporations as opposed to SMEs (in
Catalonia, year 2000, 74.4% of the jobs in companies with more than 10
employees in the ICT sector are in companies with less than 200
employees, possibly similar for all the EU)
2.- Counter productive
Software has a great natural tendency to monopolisation, due to network
effects (a program is more useful when many people use it) and other
reasons. Granting 20 year monopolies on software ideas can only shield
and strenghten present oligopolies, harming consumers, quality and
innovation.
Software development is very incremental, and combines many previous
ideas in any project. Patenting software would eliminate the
availability of raw materials and block creativity.
It is unfeasible for a programmer or SME to check their software for
patent infringement. So much so that many standards setting bodies don't
require their participants to disclose what patents they have that may
impede implementation of a standard, because they feel companies would
not afford to search in their own patent potfolio. Let alone making sure
they're not infringing anyone else's patents.
3.- Dangerous
Ability to patent algorithms and data structures would give foreign
corporations control over too many assets in the information society. By
patenting data formats (or software to encode and decode those formats),
companies could prevent authors from creating or distributing digital
art or news. Already the 2 most used image formats in the Web (GIF and
JPEG) are patented (so that your photos in the European Parliament web
site might infringe on a patent). The same goes for audio (MP3) or video
(MPEG-4). These and other patent holders can tax or censor much of the
multimedia content in the world.
Since the EPO has already illegally granted more than 30000 patents on
software, mostly to USA or Japan companies, the directive while
legalizing them, would leave foreign companies at a competitive
advantage over European software houses
Since software is information, restricting trade in software is a
restriction in free speech too. Whereas a mechanical engineer will
always be able to publish blueprints of patented engines, a software
expert won't be able to publish blueprints of patented software, since
software is its own blueprint, and publishing it would infringe the
patents.
Similarly, mechanical patents affect (directly) only those having a
factory, while software patents affect anybody having a computer (it
only takes a command to "manufacture" a new copy of a program).
4.- Inconsistent
Patenting software is contradictory: A patent is a monopoly on a device
in exchange for diffusion of (previously unavailable) information on the
device. If you pretend the device to be software, since software is
information you end up with patents that are a monopoly on information
in exchange for diffusion of information. You can't diffuse information
and monopolise it at the same time, so the deal can't work.
Legalizing software patents in the EU is also inconsistent with the
e-Europe strategy and the will to lead the world knowledge economy in
the next decade. Most current (but hardly enforceable for now) software
patents granted by the EPO belong to USA or Japan corporations, that
would be suddenly left in a dominant position if the patents became
legal. We can hardly win against our competitors by copying their
mistakes. We would be much better having our businesses
innovate while USA businesses litigate (like for instance the patent
suit against e-bay that might stop or damage their activities in the
USA).
Last but not least software patents are incompatible with free software,
since patented software would not be free, and free software authors
could not pay patent licenses per copy since they don't even try to know
how many copies of their programs exist (so much for shareware too).
Free software such as linux or samba is already suffering from this.
Hence, legalizing software patents would conflict with the recent trend
to use and promote free software in European public admnistration, as
proposed in a report by Unisys, for the European Program "Interchange of
Data between Administrations" (already proposed in 2001 by the European
Parliament's Temporary Committee on the Echelon Interception System, for
security reasons, and recently a proposed EU security agency would
include in their goals the promotion of free software). There are
various other endorsements of free software in public administration
which would be incompatible with software patents: UK, Germany, France,
Spain, Finland...
Europe needs to ensure ideas remain free and software is competitive,
please support the Call for Action
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/demands/ and help Eurolinux
http://www.eurolinux.org