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Software Patents Damage Society
Patent:
- A licence to restrict free trade & raise
prices to public;
- A monopoly purchased by fees to lawyers,
examiners & profit sharing governments
Un polished Page - No Time !
- I could produce a much better formulated page, but my
unpaid time is limited.
- I am not a patent professional, with fat budgets to
promote biased perceptions of how useful patents supposedly
are.
- Do not believe software patents are good for society
just because patent professionals devote more resources to
promote their ever expanding, ever more damaging
business.
INDEX Within This Page
- Community
Distribution Patent Policy FAQ Version: 1.0 Published: 8
July 2011 prepared by lawyers at the Software Freedom Law
Center (SFLC) at the request of the Debian (Linux) project .
- http://endsoftpatents.org/innovating-without-patents
www.nosoftwarepatents.com
- FSF: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/savingeurope.html
League for
Programming Freedom USA oriented.
- http://www.ffii.org
Based in Germany, with info in English too.
- http://voice.media.org/essays/patent.html
USA oriented.
- EPO
(European Patent Office) The profit making monopoly
that needs its articles rewritten by the `Diplomatic
Conference' or other European controller EG European
Parliament http://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en,
to force them to start working for the public interest,
instead of against it as at present. Currently EPO
functions to benefit themselves, patent lawyers, big
companies, commercial (but not free) software producers,
nations collecting hidden taxes as patent fees, &
individual patent holders, some of whom file patents
because it looks good (to suckers) for them &/or their
employer. Patents restrict the rest of society, stifling
development, in particular of small firms that are the life
blood of the future economies.
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- It seems vampire patent professionals prey on the
software `industry', harming public domain free
software.
- Do not ; swallow the patent professionals misleading
case promoting supposed benefits to society of the patent
system, some patents probably are beneficial, (eg perhaps
protecting investment in medical drug testing), but not
software patents.
- Realise the offices, suits, computers, internet &
computers services, & multi-lingual language skills
available to promote the full time patent professionals,
are all paid for by someone else's hard work, &/or a
software purchasers bloated purchase price.
- Patent professionals do not design technology, they
sell obstructions to use of technology.
- Patent lawyers sell their time, applying to block &
exploit the public from use of often simple, trivial, &
unavoidable methods, & when not doing that, fight other
patent lawyers, filing objections to the patent
applications of others.
- Patent examiners, patent lawyers & patent office
management & staff all make lots of money from this
obstruction of the public, & naturally don't want it to
stop. "Screw the public, & join the gravy train!" about
summarises the ethos.
- Software (& many other) patents should be scrapped
wholesale, & technicaly qualified patent professionals
should not be syphoned from industry & research, to
bloated patent offices, that inhibit technological progress
& public
domain free software.
- Do not believe public relations rubbish from Patent
Offices, the truth is patents are highly damaging in the
computing (software & systems engineering) sector,
& better scrapped. (Don't know about the semiconductor
fabrication industry, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, etc
).
- The patent system is a badly evolved outgrowth of a
very old fashioned system, that has drifted further &
further from the original intent to protect investment to
fund innovation. Now it is out of control, ever expands to
no good purpose, other than the prime purpose of any entity
- to exist for its own sake - & in some areas of
technology, would be better scrapped altogether, damaging
to society, not only because of granting obstructive
patents, but also because patent offices rob industry &
science of good intellects, that could be better employed
elsewhere, rather than wasted.
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- Don't believe anyone involved with the Patent Business
until you've found out what their terms of reference are
& who pays who to get their their money.
- Do Not be naive & assume patent offices &
examiners are impartial arbiters working for the common
good - they are not ! They're all well paid to work with
patents, & they nearly all see a common threat: Less
patent applications = Less money.
- Time was, when software could not be patented (as
such), but the profits in the software industry excite an
avaricious gleam in the eye of the Patent Professionals
!
- They tell anyone who will listen, how they can `help'
the software industry, & unfortunately they are filing
far more patent applications in the software area than they
used to.
- Patent Professionals might improve some individual
corporate profits, beyond the extent of their associated
professional & official fees, but they damage the
software industry in the process, & a higher percentage
of a market of more limited total size, is not necessarily
good news, even for a Patent application obsessed company.
(A philosophically similar argument to the debate between
free trade & protectionism).
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- Do Not believe either patent examiners or patent
lawyers are unbiased, they're making lots of money in
comfortable jobs, while burdening software (& other
technologies) with their obstructive patents. One clue is
the language they use: they'll concentrate on the "Software
Industry" & ignore the glarng fact that much software
is now _Free_ ! So their
support of parts of industry, obstructs what others would
give you _Free_ !
- The obsolescent Patent system is just an obstruction to
progress, an excrescence
grown out of the King's salt tax at the city gate, akin to
former royalty's habit of granting of `Letters Patent' to
pursue particular business ventures (among other
occupations, including privateering, closely akin to
piracy), granted to raise money for the Monarch, _not_
granted to promote public development !
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- The EPO functions
as government tax collector, (the EPO earns it's owners,
the various European states, large amounts of money).
- The formal definition of the European Patent Office
that guides EPO management & examiners, is biased
toward granting patent applications, not to impartial
review of whether granting individual patents is in the
public interest.
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- Even though Software Patents overall damage the average
company's performance, companies know they need a patent
lawyer to protect them from infringement cases brought by
other companies. Once a company has engaged patent lawyers,
some won't just defend their company from other companies
infringement assertions, they'll expand their empire,
filing their own patent applications & infringement
cases against others; & the company bosses in most
cases are probably so clueless/busy they'll even forward
requests for assistance, from organisations trying to limit
the number of overall patents, to their local patent
lawyers, who, knowing full well which side their bread is
buttered, will promulgate corporate policies of non
co-operation with bodies such as the EuroLinux Anti Patent
alliance. Few may be the companies that have not had their
corporate patent policy set or suborned to fit, not the
interests of shareholders, programmers & users, but the
interests of the patent professionals, to the detriment of
others, particularly free software users.
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- I am a Computer Industry Developer, who objects to the
Patent Professionals attempt to parasitise & degrade
the industry.
- Software Patents could be a considerable future hazard
to the Free
Software Projects.
- As a developer, patents can only limit creativity, make
work less interesting, & more expensive for the public
to purchase. If designers of software & electronics
were to conform to all the stupid, trivial, obstructive
& parasitic patents granted by irresponsible patent
offices, each programmer & electronic & mechanical
designer would need multiple patent lawyers researching
each designers every idea; the patent system is ridiculous,
outmoded, old-fashioned, bureaucratic & stifles the
growth of new firms, & parasitises free software.
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- I am Not against copyright pertaining to software. As a
programmer myself, I & associates are often required to
assign copyright, on hand over rights to custom software
developed for specific requirements. I see no problem with
copyright, except that, obviously where (to speed development
& reduce costs) modules of pre-existing public code are
used (mine or other peoples), pre-existing copyrights apply
unchanged. I see a need to protect actual implemented code
with copyright (except where the author makes it public
domain etc), but I am against software patents that would bar
programmers from even independently dreaming up the same
nifty idea & re-implementing a similar solution.
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European patents shall not be granted in respect of: (a)
inventions the publication or exploitation of which would be
contrary to ``ordre public'' or morality, provided that the
exploitation shall not be deemed to be so contrary merely
because it is prohibited by law or regulation in some or all
of the Contracting States; (b) plant or animal varieties or
essentially biological processes for the production of plants
or animals; this provision does not apply to microbiological
processes or the products thereof.
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Patent professionals contribute nothing useful to the
software `industry (**)', they suck away at the cash flow
& time of creative developers, impeding progress. (An
exception might be a patent lawyer who only ever filed
appeals against software patent grants, Rumpole like,
appearing only for the defence (of software users &
developers, not patent applicants & holders).
(Note the whole misguided concept that software is
dependent on `industry' production is itself ridiculous:
There is a great deal of very good software now available Free; & a lot of
commercial software could be protected just as well by
Copyright & trade secret, binary only policies, supplied
quality documentation, & periodic new releases, as by
anti social excessive software patents.
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Click
here for their site. One bit of extracted nonsense:
16. The Government does not, however, accept the view -
asserted by some respondents - that Open Source software is
threatened by the existing extent of patentability. This
seems to fly in the face of the facts, notably that during
the last decade Open Source software has flourished.
Open Source has flourished particularly in the last 10 years or
more, from co-operation using the expanding Internet, but is
more recently now increasingly threatened by software patents,
which started being granted after the Internet boom started.
Further the stockpile of damaging patents has only much more
recently accumulated to now be seen as a seriously damaging
threat.
UK government either doesn't understand timescales, or
listened to too many intrinsically biased patent professionals,
or perhaps is just happy with the status quo, where patent
offices extract fees from applicants, & governments provide
legal enforcement structures for patent holders to extract cash
from everyone else. Governments are not neutral arbiters, -
they collect surplus revenues from national & European
patent offices. - & big business has lots of money to spend
petitioning & corresponding with government. Authors of
free software can't afford to spend resources of time &
money combating greedy patent seekers.
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Publishing & Documenting Dates To Block Patents
Nice idea, cheaper too, & less hassle, no applying, no
renewal fees. Problem is patent examiners are under pressure
doing searches, so publication may get missed. Sone go that
route anyway - A non software example: terracooler.org/
Fight Software Patents - They're not in the public interest
!
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