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Topic: Software patent debate

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	Patents
		A software patent is a patent that is designed to cover claims which involve computers, computer networks, or other programmable devices.
		The patent system is designed to "promote the advancement of science" by granting inventors the exclusive right to use their inventions for a limited time, thus ensuring an economic incentive to invent.
		Patent Trolls are a derogatory name given to firms and other parties who purchase patents for the sole purpose of suing other people and companies for patent infringement.
	ethics.csc.ncsu.edu /intellectual/law/patents/study.php (441 words)

	Los Angeles Lawyer - Software patent
		Software patents and patents on computer-implemented inventions are a class of patents and one of many legal aspects of computing.
		The court made patents generally easier to uphold by presuming patents were valid unless proved invalid and weakening the defence of nonobviousness.
		Substantive law regarding the patentability of software and computer-implemented inventions, and case law interpreting the legal provisions, are different under different jurisdictions.
	www.danataschner.com /software_patent.html (1546 words)

	Technology News: Commentary: The Fuzzy Software Patent Debate Rages On
		There are some reasons why software patents, in practice, tend to be issued when they should not be, and therefore are perceived as of poor quality.
		The PTO is required to refuse to issue patents that are "obvious" based on prior art, which means roughly that they are not sufficiently inventive to justify the award of the patent.
		The directive was intended to harmonize EU software patents, not create them of whole cloth, and to clarify the scope of software patents that may issue.
	www.technewsworld.com /story/40676.html (1881 words)

	Software patent debate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		This is not an argument for software patents; it is an argument for patents generally, and thus constitues a straw-man form of argumentation.
		Since virtually all code could be said to violate some software patent, large companies use their superior finanacial position to threaten and or pursue infringment litigation against smaller companies who cannot afford to defend themselves irrespective of the actual merits of the case.
		Software is a mathematical algorithm, a fancy mathematical equation, a calculation.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Software_patent_debate (4792 words)

	sociology - Software patent
		The first software patent ever granted is probably a patent for a "computer having slow and quick access storage, when programmed to solve a linear programming problem by an iterative algorithm, the iterative algorithm being such that (...)" applied for in 1962 by British Petroleum Company ([2], see end of page 3).
		The USPTO has traditionally not considered software to be patentable because by statute patents can only be granted to "processes, machines, articles of manufacture, and compositions of matter".
		The national jurisdictions relating to software patents in Europe and in the European Union are not harmonized even though some harmonization has been brought into the national jurisdictions in the 1970s and 1980s.
	www.aboutsociology.com /sociology/Software_patent (1659 words)

	nosoftwarepatents-award
		The patent is elected "software patent of June".
		With this in mind many large companies constantly expand their patent arsenals - with software patents which should not exist according to the current legislation and which are disputed to be in existence again and again.
		From these software patents you can select the one you believe to be the most harmful and which should therefore be the "softwarepatent of the month".
	www.nosoftwarepatents-award.com (743 words)

	IEEE Spectrum Careers
		Patents are public records, and in a centralized industry with relatively few players--such as pharmaceuticals--the assumption that all patents are common knowledge is not unreasonable.
		Patents, designed for centralized industries, have been applied to the most decentralized industry imaginable, and the result is that patent law is taken only partly seriously.
		There are many considerations to molding copyright laws to fit software best, but in an industry with literally millions of independent inventors, a copyright is much less likely to stifle innovation than a patent or to impose the cost of hiring a standing army of lawyers.
	www.spectrum.ieee.org /careers/careerstemplate.jsp?ArticleId=i080205 (1380 words)

	Software patent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Patents are not granted automatically in most countries but must usually undergo an examination process in which a patent examiner determines if the applicant is entitled to the patent claims they are requesting.
		Copyleft (that include several open source and free software licences) is an informal term used to describe license agreements that uses copyright in an unconventional manner to encourage the public disclosure of improved versions of a particular piece of software.
		Patents cover the underlying methodologies embodied in a given piece of software, or the function that the software is intended to serve, independent of the particular language or code that the software is written in.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Software_patent (3679 words)

	A Primer on Software Patents
		Software patents have become a regular topic of discussion in the media and elsewhere, as legal challenges and calls for reform of the patent system in the U.S. and abroad have increased from varying organizations.
		Software patents can be used to prevent better products and services from being made available to the public, even if the patent holder herself offers no product or service.
		The issues surrounding patents and the patentability of something that isn't as tangible as a piece of hardware are not historically new developments.
	www.internetnews.com /bus-news/print.php/3506836 (1911 words)

	Lawrence Lessig (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
		This is supported by the primary economic argument against software patents, that software developers are hamstrung by concerns that techniques they develop in the normal course of their work may, and probably do, infringe one or more patents.
		Patents are time-limited (for now: long-term strategy I have heard from corporatists is that if they have a worldwide patent system on “everything under the sun”, they’ll start pushing for longer and longer renewable terms) tradeable tools of tyranny over other people’s actions.
		Patent lawyers are not nobles of yesteryear, however you might wish it so: even if you somehow succeed in bribing enough politicians to embed software patents into european statutory law, we will simply refuse to follow such law, just as we would refuse to follow a law declaring George Bush supreme overlord of the universe.
	www.lessig.org /blog/archives/002900.shtml (17317 words)

	Technology News: Commentary: Lowering the Volume in the Software Patent Debate
		Along with other software patent opponents, it aggressively lobbied against the European Computer Implemented Inventions Directive (CIID), the current version of which arguably allows European law to be exploited to allow more software patents while validating some 30,000 software patents that have already been granted.
		For software patent opponents, the recent decision by the European Council to affirm the current draft of the CIID is a setback.
		For most open-source software licenses, nobody is able to collect individual royalties or even count the number of copies of their licensed software to determine royalties.
	www.technewsworld.com /story/41376.html (1310 words)

	Re: The Fuzzy Software Patent Debate Rages On
		Those who want patenting, want to strip the people of their right to create programs and leave it up to companies, since they are the only ones that can patent anything they come up with, however trivial.
		This appears to be the case with software patents in the U.S. and elsewhere.
		Software patents, on the other hand, allow one company to have a monopoly on the functionality of their product, making all competing products more expensive due to patent royalties, or even preventing competition in the first place if the patent holder decides not to license the patent or demands unreasonable royalties.
	www.ecommercetimes.com /perl/board/mboard.pl?board=lnitalkback&thread=1305&id=1307&display=1 (4744 words)

	Law.com - European Commission Sparks Software Patent Debate
		Software-related patents were issuing under a single set of rules followed by the Munich-based European Patent Office, but when courts ruled on a patent's validity, they followed national law, which varies from country to country.
		The irony is that until now, European patent offices have been fairly amenable to software patents -- although not as amenable as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which allows pure software patents.
		Patents, they say, will stifle innovation in the software industry, particularly among smaller companies that can't afford to take out licenses or defend against suits.
	www.law.com /jsp/article.jsp?id=1114506316658 (1854 words)

	Background Information - FFII
		The result is that while software cannot, by law, be patented, the EPO has granted large numbers of software and business process patents (which we often together call "soft patents"), which patent holders then try to validate on country-by-country basis, often with inconsistent results.
		For firms that seek patents (and broadly, this means either very large firms, or very specialised patent firms), the current situation is a clear barrier to wider application of their patents.
		For firms that do not seek patents (and broadly, this is most firms that are of small-to-medium size), the current situation is a clear barrier to open trade within the EU, as products that may be legal in one country are illegal in another.
	consultation.ffii.org /Background_Information (1388 words)

	software patent debate - Re: Software patent debate: we lose round one
		Thanks for this David, It should be clear from the discussion that the patent process is formal and that "written" documentation is a key part in establishing prior art.
		The patent process differs between countries, and blanket statements are unlikely to apply to all countries.
		Ideas per se are not patentable - it is the expression or implementation of the idea - so records of this would be needed.
	www.stylusstudio.com /xmldev/200005/post10720.html (485 words)

	Patentability and Democracy in Europe
		The European Patent Organisation (EPO) is continuing to grant thousands of monopolies on “computer-implemented” algorithms and business methods every year, against the letter and spirit of the written law, and is now, for the third time, pushing for European legislation that would impose this practise on reticent national courts.
		Patent interests in combination with inter-governmental lawmaking have formed a caricature of “innovation policy” and thereby are helping us to see clearly what is going wrong in Europe today and what needs to be done on a wider scale.
		Instead of explicitely seeking to sanction the patentabilitty of software, they are now seeking to create a central European patent court, which would establish and enforce patentability rules in their favor, without any possibility of correction by competing courts or democratically elected legislators.
	eupat.ffii.org (546 words)

	Europe Nixes Software Patents
		But the software patent debate still rages on, and some feel that a clear-cut decision to allow or bar software patents would be more beneficial to Europe's technology industry than the current fuzzy logic that surrounds the issue and allows companies to maneuver patents through the current law's legal loopholes.
		Patents can be granted for software that is an integral part of a new machine, if the software –- such as an operating system -- controls the functions of that machine.
		Open source and free software advocates feel that software patents should be banned in Europe, believing that these patents, as they exist in the United States, tend to stifle innovation, create tremendous legal risks for small and medium enterprises and reduce the incentive for knowledge sharing.
	www.wired.com /politics/law/news/2000/11/40329 (757 words)

	The open-source patent conundrum \| Tech News on ZDNet
		But IBM's 500 patent grant is tiny next to the 1,500 software patents the company files each year, the 30,000 software patents already granted by the European Patent Office and the hundreds of thousands that annually arise in the United States.
		IBM proposed the creation of a patent commons for open-source, which would probably be operated by Open Source Development Labs, an industry organization that has already dedicated a multimillion-dollar legal defense fund for open-source developers.
		Europeans are starting to realize that the software patent battle can't be caricatured as a battle between open source and the rest of the world.
	news.zdnet.com /2100-9593_22-5560019.html (1130 words)

	Software patent war ignites again - ZDNet UK
		Patents on software are formally disallowed under the European patent system, but are routinely granted by the European patent office, according to critics.
		Software patents are generally considered to add to the legal costs of large enterprises, as well as creating a hostile legal environment for smaller software businesses and open source projects.
		Proponents of the failed software patent directive and the EPLA argue the measures will not open the door to software patent litigation and will allow smaller companies to more easily benefit from the patent system.
	news.zdnet.co.uk /software/developer/0,39020387,39283515,00.htm (802 words)

	IDABC - EU: INT: Terms of software patents debate evolving
		In a separate development that may indicate the strategic use of software patents could be evolving towards different business models, IBM announced on 11 January 2005 it would provide individuals and groups working on open source software with open access to “key innovations” covered by 500 of its software patents.
		Indeed, IBM intends for this pledge to form the basis of an industry-wide "patent commons" in which patents are used to establish a platform for further innovations in areas of broad interest to information technology developers and users.
		Disagreeing that software patents are a threat to open source dvelopment, Mr MacGann said the decision to grant access to 500 IBM US patents “is a strong example of the compatibility of computer-implemented invention patents with the OSS development model" because it clearly demonstrates how patents can be used to support OSS development".
	europa.eu.int /idabc/en/document/3772 (736 words)

	BetaNews \| The European Patent Debate: Who Decides What's a Patent?
		The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure conceded that the creation of a single European Patent Court (whose own initials are also, in a sense, open-source), in its words, "could reject the abusive teachings of the EPO" with regard to software as a natural technical extension of an invention.
		If patent law truly needs to evolve, his argument continued, it would be so much easier to allow Parliament itself to amend the EPC to suit the needs of a changing economy.
		So at least for now, the debate over whether software constitutes intellectual property has made enemies out of the former champions of personal liberty -- now wrapped in the cloak of nationalism -- and the makers of the car many would think they're most likely to be seen driving.
	www.betanews.com /article/The_European_Patent_Debate_Who_Decides_Whats_a_Patent/1158889931/2 (1049 words)

	Feld Thoughts - The Great Software Patent Debate
		I have yet to met someone who knows something about the software industry who thinks software patents are a good idea.
		Most of the better software companies simply rack up a lot of patents for defensive purposes -- when they get sued for patent infringement, they look at the plaintiff's product and try to figure out if they are violating one of their patents.
		Software is too much of an incremental, building block craft for patents to be useful.
	www.feld.com /blog/archives/2007/06/the_great_softw.html (481 words)

	Parliament urged to restrain EPO's software patenting \| Channel Register
		Its proposal provided that, in order to be patentable, an invention that is implemented through the execution of software on a computer or similar apparatus has to make a contribution in a technical field that is not obvious to a person of normal skill in that field.
		The objective of the resolution, he says, would be to influence the policy of the European Patent Office (EPO), and possibly to request a new proposal for a software patent directive from the European Commission along the lines of Parliamentary amendments made to the previous draft.
		In particular he mentions a patent reform bill that is presently being discussed in the US Congress, and the as yet unclarified status of software patents in India, South America, South Africa, and other regions.
	www.channelregister.co.uk /2005/08/30/european_parliament_software_patents (1031 words)

	Boing Boing: Patent reform cage-match debate in DC, Dec 7
		Washington, DC's Brookings Institution will be hosting a panel on software and law, on Dec 7, and I could not be more enthused about it.
		This is partly because I'm the moderator, and partly because it's going to be an open debate on some enthralling subjects by some exceptionally well-informed indivudals.
		As well as being a rousing good time, this debate _matters_, because the Patent Reform Act of 2005 is gaining steam in Congress, and it's still an open question whether it will help the world of software or just create more constraints.
	www.boingboing.net /2005/12/01/patent_reform_cagema.html (199 words)

	Lobbyists prepare for next software patent battle - ZDNet UK
		Last year, the directive on the patentability of computer implemented inventions, commonly known as the software patent directive, was rejected by the European Parliament.
		But the debate around software patents has now reopened, with the EC's launch of a public consultation into how the patent system should be changed.
		Although this consultation does not mention software patents directly, there are fears that the Community Patent legislation could ratify the European Patent Office's current practice of granting software patents.
	news.zdnet.co.uk /itmanagement/0,1000000308,39248676,00.htm (565 words)

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