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Archive for the ‘patents’ Category

European Patent Office asks itself about software patents

Posted in europe, ffii, patents, politics on March 22, 2009| 1 Comment »

Software patents, ah… It’s like the seemingly never ending saga of SCO. Can’t they just leave us in peace?

Soon, the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) at the European Patent Office (EPO) will decide on several questions about software patents, asked by the President of the same organization. We’ll soon find out what kind of independence might or might not exist among the various layers of the EPO… (Interesting setup, for that matter.)

The questions, and some responses from the global community, can be found on the EPO page. Notably, replies from Jacob Hallén (FFII) and Philips are available there. URLs seem to be dynamic so please look these up on the page, right now under “23.10.2008 Case G3/08”. (My organization has no official submission as of yet, the deadline is the end of April.)

Sadly, the questions posed to the EBA are mined with typical EPO philosophy including their definitions of “technical effect”, “further technical effect”, “technical character”, “technical considerations” and other terminology they have used over the years. In that way they justified black being white, or more specifically the applicability of software patents (but, naturally, not “as such”).

Seeing how the specific questions to the EBA are phrased (quite some traps in there), and what is not asked, it seems clear to me that any set of answers with just “yes” or “no” is unable to speak against software patents in any meaningful way. Furthermore, if only one was to accept the premises of the questions, I submit that seemingly innocent arguments could be twisted in a number of ways to justify software patents. Nice job!

In their reply, Philips seems to have got the general idea: (page 4)

“[…] the claims define the invention in terms of the technical features […] is a technical feature if it has a technical effect. Whether this technical effect is on the computer or on the outside world, is irrelevant.”

Rough translation: “if it’s a new thing that required some thinking to come up with, and it runs on a computer, you can patent it”.

Considering how this opinion seems all too easy to find in certain circles, we have a pessimistic press release on this subject.

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Microsoft manager points out flaw of software patents

Posted in ffii, microsoft, patents, politics on November 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Eric Brechner of Microsoft says in his blog: (emphasis added)

“When using existing libraries, services, tools, and methods from outside Microsoft, we must be respectful of licenses, copyrights, and patents. Generally, you want to carefully research licenses and copyrights (your contact in Legal and Corporate Affairs can help), and never search, view, or speculate about patents. I was confused by this guidance till I wrote and reviewed one of my own patents. The legal claims section—the only section that counts—was indecipherable by anyone but a patent attorney. Ignorance is bliss and strongly recommended when it comes to patents.”

I applaud the admission here of one of the core problems of today’s patent system; patents simply don’t serve their purpose if they don’t ensure the distribution of knowledge. Now, if software patents would at least be readable, the other problems with that concept would be even more visible…

Software patents is like patenting an element. Putting arbitrary limits on this beast won’t help, and it would be a start to reach this level of debate in wider circles when we talk about patent reform.

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Ninjas and IT madness

Posted in dns, japan, net neutrality, patents on July 30, 2008| Leave a Comment »

It seems I am a little back(b)logged here. (Sorry.)

Anyway, here are some of many interesting recent events:

  • I went to Japan! I was there for 10 days with fellow Computer Science students; mostly in Tokyo, but my trip also included a short stop in Kyoto. If I should include any random thoughts about the journey, I would mention the Firefox ad in the metro, featuring a fox in a boxing ring. Very curious… 🙂
  • When talking about Japan, I simply have to include a ninja reference, no? Well, here you go: watch Ask a Ninja, net neutrality.
  • The DNS bug. It can have many interesting security implications, as this Flash movie suggests. (Thanks to Xavier for pointing to this site.)
  • The patent establishment makes fools of themselves again: our beloved European Patent Office says that software is an “ambiguous” term. (I do not know about original references yet, sorry, maybe this is only available in printed form so far. Link.) Apparently some software is more equal than other software, and deserves Patents to cover it. Here is a Digital Majority post about this.

Enjoy!

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ACLU: abstract patents violates constitution

Posted in aclu, censorship, ffii, patents, politics on April 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »

American Civil Liberties Union has filed a brief about free speech issues of an application for an abstract patent. FFII says hi; it’s great to see a major civil rights organization to bring this up in the patents sphere. With enough exposure, hopefully the insanity of business and software patents may come to an end some day…

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Microsoft Linux? (Soon in more versions than Vista!)

Posted in linux, microsoft, patents on October 23, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Microsoft apparently does not think all the versions of Windows Vista provide enough choice for the market. So, to ensure a better selection, they now seem to be looking at Linux systems as well: SuSE from Novell; Xandros; Linspire; and finally Turbolinux. Given these announcements of patent agreements (“protections”), I’m sure said distributors won’t “notice” any complaints… for now.

What will happen with resisting companies like Red Hat, though? And what will Microsoft do when fully recognising the success of non-commercial projects such as Ubuntu? (Nah, never mind, certainly there are no evil strategies here. I’ll sleep well tonight.)

Anyhow – if you thought that the EU ruling would stop these agreements, you may want to share the doubts of Groklaw on the Commission’s settlement with Microsoft (which brings into mind what my association predicted one month ago).

Oh, and OSI has approved two licenses (MS-PL, MS-RL) from Microsoft. After all, what is software worth if it doesn’t have a brand new license? (Bonus points for certain features, such as incompatibility with the GPL.)

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