Showing posts with label heise online. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heise online. Show all posts

24 June 2008

Fewer EU Patents: Good - and Bad

First the good news:

Last year, the European Patent Office (EPO) issued far fewer patents than in 2006. The Munich patent authorities have announced that they approved exactly 54,699 patent applications for commercial protection, 12.9 per cent fewer than in the previous year. EPO President Alison Brimelow says the drop is the result of a new focus on the quality of patents rather than quantity; patent applications actually increased by 3.9 per cent to 140,700. She said her office is making sure that the temporary monopoly rights granted are actually relevant. She says the figures show that the EPO is headed in the right direction.

Well, maybe, but heise online also has this to say:

Nonetheless, the EPO staff's morale seems to have never been lower. A survey conducted among several thousand staff members found that only 4 per cent have faith in the management board. Only 6 per cent said they were satisfied with their direct superiors and the president. The auditors have also long been complaining that they are chronically overworked.

Last April, Brimelow herself complained that the backlog of work at the EPA and the other two largest patent offices in the US and Japan was only growing and could no longer be handled by current staff.

So fewer patents may well simply be the result of the fact that the EPO is getting swamped, and that quality will actually go down, not up. In any case, the EPO's own cries for help demonstrate that the idea of giving the EPO any more power through a unified European patent system is madness.

18 January 2008

No EU Snooping, Danke

Heise online reports on a very bad idea:

If things go the way the Conservative British MEP Christopher Heaton-Harris wants them to, internet providers will be much more closely involved in the battle against copyright infringements. He has introduced a proposal in the European Parliament under which access providers would not only have to install filters on the network side, in order to prevent misuse of their networks for the theft of intellectual property, but would also be obliged to close down Internet access to clients who "repeatedly or substantially" infringe copyright. Content that infringes others' rights would moreover have to be blocked by providers.

As to why it's a bad idea, here's what I've just sent to all my MEPs using the indispensable WriteToThem site:

First, it won't work. Users will simply encrypt their files before sending them, making them completely opaque to content filters. The power of computers is such that this is an easy operation to carry out, and it will become the norm if the above proposal is enacted. Breaking that encryption, by contrast, is very hard, and access providers will be unable to do this in order to inspect the contents.

Secondly, the proposal requires access providers to examine the full traffic flows of everyone. The scope for abuse is enormous. Most people do not encrypt sensitive information that they include in emails, for example. Sometimes Web transmissions are not properly encrypted, allowing sensitive information such as credit card details or health information to be read. If this proposal were enacted, and access providers were required to monitor all traffic, it would be tempting – and easy – for criminals to infiltrate such companies and extract sensitive data.

Finally, there is a deeper discussion needed about whether sharing copyright material is actually bad for the owners of that material. There is growing evidence that people who download such material go on to make more content purchases than those who do not. This is not really surprising: the downloaded materials are effectively free publicity, and a way to discover new content of interest. When people have the chance to sample and explore new content, they end up buying things that they would never have thought of purchasing, bringing more money to the content owners. It might be that the content industries should really be encouraging this kind of free marketing: more research is needed at the very least.

If you feel strongly about this - and you should - perhaps you'd like to write a quick note to your MEPs.

05 July 2006

Another One Bites the (GNU GPL) Dust

Univention is not a company I'd heard of before; apparently,

Univention GmbH offers a range of Linux-based products and services. Our core competencies are integration of Linux and Windows (on the server and on the client side), directory services, Linux on the desktop, and thin-client technology.

And now it has decided to take its product open source, using the GNU GPL. Heise Online has a better explanation of what is going on:

Both the installation program and, more importantly, the LDAP-based UCS management system are affected; the latter makes it easy to install Linux systems even in far-reaching environments, providing management down to identity and infrastructure. It offers defined interfaces and has, among other things, connectors for an Active Directory, which enables smooth integration in Windows networks.

The Heise report also has this interesting nugget:

The firm stated that this step was only taken after all of its key customers had been consulted. The customers are still willing to pay for the professional maintenance of the code -- for reasons of product liability among other things -- and for support.