Open Enterprise Interview: Bernard Dalle, Index Ventures

On Open Enterprise blog.

Two Poisonous Proposals: Patents and Chlorine

We have a new enemy, it seems. It's called the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), and here's one sharp analysis of what it's up to

TEC which comprises EU and US high level representatives put a substantive harmonisation of patent law on its agenda. Substantive patent law covers what is patentable or not. The attempt to impose the low US standards on Europe via the Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT) process utterly failed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Also progress in the WIPO B+ subgroup (without developing nations) could not be reached. Now the TEC is used as a new forum to push forward with lowering patentability standards through the back door. The TEC is a closed process, and sits outside the WIPO multilateral treaty talks. Since WIPO participants Brazil, India, and China began to fight EU-US proposals for ever more aggressive patents, the EU and US have begun their own bilateral talks.

Interestingly, the TEC is not content with a metaphorical poisoning of the computer industry, but wants to poison the entire European Union literally, with chlorine-soaked chickens:

Members of Parliament from all political horizons have reacted with fury to a Commission proposal yesterday (28 May) to re-allow imports of poultry rinsed with chemicals, stemming mainly from the United States.

Concretely, the Commission wants to allow businesses to use four currently banned anti-microbal substances to decontaminate poultry carcasses.

...

But MEPs, meeting in Parliament's Environment Committee, were incensed by the decision, which they say contradicts Community food production standards. "The chlorination of chicken intended for human consumption is not acceptable for the EU […] Such food production methods are at variance with the relevant Community standards, and threatening to the EU's entire set of food production standards and rules," states an EP press release.

...

If approved, the proposal would effectively lift an 11-year ban on US poultry, which are generally treated with these processes.

The US has been pushing for the ban to be lifted for years but to no avail. However, the issue was recently pinpointed as a top priority in the new "Transatlantic Economic Council" process, which aims to remove remaining regulatory obstacles hampering trade and investment between the two economic giants.

Ah well, at least the TEC is consistent in its aims.

God Bless Patent Trolls....

....for continuing to demonstrate just how mind-bendingly stupid software patents are:

SINGAPORE--A local company has laid claims to a technology that Web sites across the globe deploy to link images to other Web pages, and sent out notification letters to several companies demanding to be paid licensing fees.

Dubbing itself "pioneers of visual search technology", Vuestar Technologies said it owns the patent to the technology that enables "Internet searching via visual images".

In sum, the company implied that any Web site that uses pictures and graphics to link to another site or Web page will need a license from Vuestar.

"Those who use visual images which hyperlink to other Web pages or Web sites...whether on the first page or subsequent pages of a Web site require a Vuestar 'license of use'," the company said on its site.

Riiiiight. (Via Slashdot.)

Should We Boycott Microsoft? Can We?

On Linux Journal.

Is This the Start of Red Hat 2.0?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Teaching Blackboard a Lesson About Patents

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Marvels of Modularity

One word that has cropped up time and again on this blog is "modularity". It's one of the prime characteristics of the open source way - and one of its greatest strengths. Now wonder, then, that Microsoft has finalled cottoned on - helped, no doubt, by the abject failure of its Vista monster:

When Windows 7 launches sometime after the start of 2010, the desktop OS will be Microsoft's most "modular" yet. Having never really been comfortable with the idea of a single, monolithic desktop OS offering, Microsoft has offered multiple desktop OSes in the marketplace ever since the days of Windows NT 3.1, with completely different code bases until they were unified in Windows 2000. Unification isn't necessarily a good thing, however; Windows Vista is a sprawling, complex OS.

A singular yet highly modular OS could give Microsoft the best of all possible worlds: OSes that can be highly customized for deployment but developed monolithically. One modular OS to rule them all, let's say.

Modularity has another huge benefit for Microsoft: it will allow it to address the nascent ultraportable market, something that it finds hard to do with its current operating systems.

Needless to say, though, even in making this sensible move, Microsoft manages to add a touch of absurdity:

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft already has a patent on a "modular operating system" concept.

A *patent* on modularity? Give me a break....

Court Backslides on UK Software Patents

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why Enterprises Should Fight Software Patents

On Open Enterprise blog.

End Software Patents Now!

One of the most remarkable - and heartening - changes in recent years has been in the attitude to software patents. Until a few years back, there was a certain fatalism regarding these particularly pernicious intellectual monopolies, as if they belonged, with death and taxes, to the inevitable and immutable. But people have started fighting back, both in terms of seeking to have patents revoked, and trying to get the entire category abolished.

The latest manifestation of this is the End Software Patents site:

Every company is in the software business, which means that every company has software liability. We estimate $11.4 billion a year is spent on software patent litigation (see our resources for economists page), and not just by Microsoft and IBM—The Green Bay Packers, Kraft Foods, and Ford Motor are facing software patent infringement lawsuits for their use of the standard software necessary for running a modern business.

Software innovation happens without government intervention. Virtually all of the technologies you use now, was developed before software was widely viewed as patentable. The Web, email, your word processor and spreadsheet program, instant messaging, or even more technical features like the psychoachoustic encoding and Huffman compression underlying the MP3 standard—all of it was originally developed by enthusiastic programmers, many of whom have formed successful business around such software, none of whom asked the government for a monopoly. So if software authors have a proven track-record of innovation without patents, why force them to use patents? What is the gain from billions of dollars in patent litigation?

Best of all on what is sure to become one of the central sites in the fight against patents, are the resources. Even though I follow this area closely, I was amazed at just how much hard evidence there is that software patents are harmful from just about every point of view. Victory just got closer.

MySQL's Disappearing Anti-Patent Page

Here's a troubling observation:

Go to the MySQL Web site and try to click on the MySQL anti-software patent page, and you won't find it. It's the other shoe dropping as MySQL today became part of Sun Microsystems, which like the rest of the commercial software and services industry, considers software patents a necessary evil.

Let's hope this isn't part of a larger trend at the new MySQL....

Charlie's Not My Darling (Again)

Charlie McCreevy is a one-man disaster area: first he tries to bring in software patents for the European Union, now he wants to extend copyright for performers. I could rant about this but Mike Masnick has already said everything that needs to be said:

It's important to be entirely clear here: this is a total and complete bastardization of copyright law. Copyright law was intended to grant the creator of content a deal: you create new content and we will give you a limited time monopoly on the rights to that content before passing it on to the public domain, from which everyone can benefit. It was designed as an incentive system, providing a gov't backed monopoly in exchange for the creation of content. By creating content and accepting that deal, musicians clearly said that it was a reasonable deal. To later go back and change the terms for content already created and extend copyright makes no sense and is violating the contract made with the public. You can't newly incent someone to create content that they already created 50 years ago. Thus, the only reason to extend copyright is if you believe that it's really a welfare system for musicians. If that's the case, then we should be explicit about it, and present it that way, rather than calling it copyright.

That's not all that McCreevy has up his sleeve either. He's also apparently a huge fan of copyright levies that add taxes to any blank media for the sake of reimbursing musicians just in case you happen to use that blank media to record unauthorized material. It's effectively a you must be a criminal tax. So, basically, McCreevy's plan is to treat all consumers as criminals, forcing them to cough up extra money for musicians, while also setting up a welfare system for musicians hidden in the copyright system. Musicians must love him, but it's a bit ridiculous for him to claim these proposals make sense because "copyright protection for Europe's performers represents a moral right to control the use of their work and earn a living from their performances". Does Mr. McCreevy earn a living from something he did 50 years ago? Does Mr. McCreevy get a cut every time a consumer buys something just in case they commit a crime?

Superb stuff, Mike.

The Thin End of the Software Patents Wedge

On Open Enterprise blog.

Knock, Knock, Nokia

Here's some good news:

A company backed by hedge fund and private equity company Fortress Investment Group has filed a lawsuit against the world's top cell phone maker, Nokia, for alleged patent infringement.

Why am I calling this good news, since my position on intellectual monopolies has been made fairly plain on these pages? Well, because of this:

IP-Com decided to sue Nokia after the mobile-phone maker refused to pay 12 billion euros ($17.77 billion), which IP-Com had demanded from Nokia for using the patents for mobile communications technology, Schoeller said.

Yeah, 12 billion euros: that's a reasonable demand, isn't it? Maybe reasonable enough to dun into Nokia's corporate brain that patents really aren't a good idea, since in the past it has sometimes aligned itself with those wanting *more* software patents in Europe. Maybe reasonable enough that it's even prepared to fight the idea now.

Enclosing the Language Commons

One of the many arguments against patenting software is that it's as stupid as copyrighting language: if you did that, nobody could talk without getting sued. Similarly, thanks to the essential nature of software algorithms, nobody can program without infringing on something.

It seems that we may need to revise that example of ridiculousness:

Last year, in an attempt to wrestle a few pennies of the GST from the tight-fisted grip of the federal government, the City of Toronto launched a snazzy public relations campaign under the banner “one cent now.”

Unfortunately, before they could enjoy the fruits of their labour, they were slapped with a cease-and-desist order by the Royal Canadian Mint.

The dispute was over the phrase “one cent.” It turns out it is not in the public domain. For the privilege of using it, the City of Toronto needed to pay the mint more than $47,000 in licensing fees, something it neglected to do.

It was an honest oversight. After all, who would have thought a corporation, private or public, could own a phrase so common to everyday language?

Not Patently Clear...

In a surprising (to this Kat at least) turn of events, the Honourable Mr Justice Kitchin has ruled today that the current UK Patent Office practice of flatly rejecting patent claims to computer program products is wrong.

This is obviously bad news, if true, but looking at the very interesting comments to the above post, there seems to be a lot of doubt about whether the ruling does, in fact, mean precisely that, or something else.

Clear as mud, then. But certainly worrying....

Update: Some clarity provided in this useful post; bad news, though....

RMS Tells It As It Is

Nice to hear it from the, er, horse's mouth:

A patent is an artificial government-imposed monopoly on implementing a certain method or technique. If the method or technique can be implemented by software, so that the patent prohibits the distribution and use of certain programs, we call it a software patent.

Hardware is Like Software? - Ban Hardware Patents

I won't bother demolishing this sad little piece on why software patents are so delicious and yummy, because Mike Masnick has already done that with his customary flair.

But I would like to pick on something purports to be an argument in the former:

One needs to understand that there is fundamentally no difference between software and hardware; each is frequently expressed in terms of the other, interchangeably describing the same thing. For example, many microprocessors are conceptualized as software through the use of hardware description languages (HDL) such as Bluespec System Verilog and VHDL. The resulting HDL software code is downloaded to special microprocessors known as FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), which can mimic a prospective chip's design and functions for testing. Eventually, the HDL code may be physically etched into silicon. Voilà! The software becomes hardware.

Well, that's jolly interesting, isn't it? Because it means that such hardware is in fact simply an instantiation of algorithms - hard-wired, to be sure, but no different from chiselling those algorithms in granite, say. And as even the most hardened patent fan concedes, pure knowledge such as mathematics is not patentable.

So the logical conclusion of this is not that software is patentable, but that such hardware *shouldn't* be. I'd go further: I suspect that anything formed by instantiating digial information in an analogue form - but which is not essentially analogue - should not be patentable. The only things that might be patentable are purely analogue objects - what most people would recognise as patentable things.

There is an added benefit to taking this approach, since it is also solves all those conundrums about whether virtual objects - in Second Life, for example - should be patentable. Clearly, they should not, because they are simply representations of digital entities. But if you wanted to make an analogue version - and not just a hard-wiring - you could reasonable seek a patent if it fulfilled the usual conditions.

Patently Outrageous

Europe does not allow software patents, but that doesn't stop some people - patent lawyers, mostly - from circumventing that clear and specific intention. One of them has not only written a book on how to sneak software patents through the system, but is now challenging an eminently sensible ruling on the subject by the UK authorities last year.

But the bits that stick in my craw are the following sections of the accompanying press release:

High-tech businesses can obtain a European-level monopoly over the distribution of computer disks and internet downloads of programs that configure an apparatus to perform a patented process. Now, in Britain, they cannot.

and

“A lot of people think there is no problem here because disks and downloads are protected by copyright,” noted Nicholas Fox, of Beresford & Co, the patent attorney acting for the high-tech five. “However, that is just not true. Copyright protection only protects code against copying. In contrast, patent protection enables a company to monopolise an invention even if competitors independently come up with the same idea.

Got that? These poor little companies just absolutely must have a monopoly on ideas to stop others from coming up with the same idea *independently*, because, you know, intellectual monopolies - like all monopolies - are just so good for society, and we can't allow other people to have the same ideas on their own without paying, oh my word no, because - heavens! - art and science might actually progress. And we can't have that, can we?

It's sad enough writing a book on how to get around a clear legal statement of intent; but brazenly demanding the right to a monopoly in what amounts to mathematical knowledge (as all software is, embodied in logical operations and algorithms) really takes the biscuit.

Software Patents: Abolition Now!

One of the constant themes of this blog is the pernicious effect of software patents - both in countries where they exist, like the US, and even elsewhere, like the UK, where they don't, because of knock-on effects. So it's good to see that someone is finally getting to grips with the problem on the other side of the pond:

What could make the Free Software Foundation (FSF), proprietary software companies, and at least one venture capitalist into allies? The End Software Patents (ESP) coalition, a new organization poised to swing into action next month under the leadership of Ben Klemens.

The campaign currently has seed funding of a quarter million dollars from sources those associated with the group won't disclose, and hopes to augment that with donations from individuals and companies for a struggle that, to judge by the usual amount of time it takes to push major changes through the US Supreme Court, could take five years or more to complete.

I won't be holding my breath on this one, but it can only help raise awareness and - ultimately - lead to some sanity being brought into a seriously broken system.