[Lancaster] EU to vote on computer software patents.

[Andrew Baxter]

I just found out the EU parliament is voting on Sep 1st on a directive which 
would legalise unlimited patenting of computer software. I sent the following 
email to all the North West MEPs - if you want to do the same, here are the 
addresses,

andy.

linglewood@europarl.eu.int, arlene.mccarthy@easynet.co.uk, ratsmep@aol.com, 
contact@gary-titley-mep.new.labour.org.uk, dsumberg@europarl.eu.int, 
chrisdaviesmep@cix.co.uk, twynn@europarl.eu.int, ddover@europarl.eu.int, 
briansimpson@lab.u-net.com, jfoster@europarl.eu.int

hello,

I am writing because I have recently heard that the European Parliament is to 
vote on Sep 1st on a directive (COM(2002)92 2002/0047) which would legalise 
the unlimited patenting of computer software and business models implemented 
using this, against current practice and the opinion of a wide body of people 
in the computer industry. Although I am not a professional programmer, I am a 
user of and part-time contributor to the open source computer operating 
system known as 'linux', which depends for its existence on the ability of 
people who are motivated to write software for free release to use their own 
creativity to write programs as they wish without having to avoid tripping 
over previous patents which in most cases they may not even be aware of.

In many cases the kinds of patents which are now being allowed through, due to 
a gradual and deliberate erosion of the letter and spirit of existing law, 
cover quite trivial innovations which any competent programmer would think of 
naturally as part of their craft. To give an example of the height of 
absurdity the situation is reaching, the European Patent Office has recently 
granted a patent to Amazon.com covering all computer-based methods of 
automatically delivering a gift to someone else. So if, for example, a shop 
in Lancaster where I live wanted a web site which people could use to send a 
gift to a friend or relative, they would be bound to pay a license fee to 
Amazon. This runs counter to the existing Article 52 of the European Patent 
Convention of 1973, which explicitly excludes computer software and business 
practices from patentability; currently computer software is covered by 
copyright law only, which has a different effect.

In other words, lawyers paid by large computer companies have for years been 
using their rhetorical skills to deliberately erode the clearly stated view 
of the European Community on the issue of software patents, in a way that is 
harmful to free innovation in the industry and in the end benefits no-one, 
and are now looking to the EC to enshrine their activities in new law.

I hope that you will resist this trend by voting against the motion and 
requesting that the draft directive be rewritten in a way which takes account 
of the interests of the broader community of computer users and 
professionals, rather than the narrow interests of a few companies and the 
lawyers who profit from their activities.

I have included some web references at the end of this email which you might 
wish to read if you want to look into this issue for yourself. Having made my 
main point, I would like to finish with some words on open source software 
and the importance of open standards in making the internet what it is, which 
you may read or not as you wish.

I am writing this email on a program called 
kmail which is part of the linux open source operating system. It probably 
looks much like the program running on the computer screen you are now sat in 
front of reading this email - a window I can type messages into, a scrolling 
list of received messages, buttons to press to send and receive mail and so 
on. This program and the others on my computer have been written by people 
across the world who enjoy writing software for others to use, and prefer to 
work in a spirit of open collaboration similar to the tradition of academic 
research, where although due credit is given to previous work, others are 
free to build on that as they wish. Having downloaded my own copy for free, I 
do what I can to put back into this community by giving advice to other users 
on the internet newsgroups and writing small programs. A nice thing about 
linux from my point of view as someone somewhere between the complete novice 
and the experienced programmer is that if I see a simple problem with the 
system that I know how to fix, I can do it myself, then make the patch 
available for others to use. Although open source software is not exactly 
mainstream, it is one of the more interesting social developments in the 
computer world in recent years, and is gathering momentum as time goes by, 
particularly among the younger generation of computer programmers, and many 
talented people across the world are putting their energy into it. It should 
also not be written off as marginal - for example the latest Macintosh 
operating system uses an open source system as its core, and just under half 
of the web's busiest sites use the open source program 'apache' as their 
webserver. If the current trend towards patenting ever more trivial software 
innovations is allowed to continue, this movement, which I wish to see 
flourish, will be threatened, as many of the people writing open source code 
do not have the financial resources to defend themselves against patent 
infringement suits which, as is the way of these things, may in some cases 
not be justified even in the narrowest sense.

Another area in which software patenting may have a bad effect is in its 
impact on the open standards which the internet is currently based on. At the 
moment, these are discussed among a range of interested parties, then 
published as official standards which anyone may use. So although there are 
many different web browsers and editors on a range of computer platforms, 
some of which are proprietory, the protocols which these programs use to talk 
to each other are open, preventing any one organisation from controlling the 
system. Similarly with things like email - I can send an email to anyone who 
has an address, and it does not matter that their mailreader is Eudora, but 
mine is kmail. Microsoft among others have tried in various ways to erode 
these common protocols and lock people into proprietory systems which they 
control; so far without much success, as open standards like Java / 
JavaScript have generally won out over things like Microsoft's similar 
technology. However, software patenting gives more power to those who wish to 
make the internet proprietory, and takes it from those who wish to keep 
things open. If software is protected under copyright law, then the 
particular code someone has written to implement a means of communication is 
legally protected, but another party is also free to write code which does 
the same thing in a different way, and thus keep communication open. Under 
patent law the situation would be different - the concept of that protocol 
would protected rather than a particular implementation, so companies would 
be able to use the law to lock users into their particular system and thus 
create a divided internet where users can only talk to others who have bought 
into the same system. In human terms, this would be as if someone had a 
patent on a major world language, and could charge license fees from those 
they let speak it, and stop the mouths of those they didn't. I hope you can 
see why moves in this direction should be resisted.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,

yours sincerely, andrew baxter.

http://swpat.ffii.org/ - Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
http://ukcdr.org/ - Campaign for digital rights, uk.
http://www.fsf.org/ - free software foundation.
http://www.durak.org/sean/pubs/bss/ - web server market share.
http://www.linux.org/info/index.html - linux online

-- 
Please don't send me html mail or un-notified attachments. These will be 
automatically filed under 'probable spam' unless I'm expecting an email which 
hasn't come.
If you do need to send an attachment or html mail, put [attachment] or [html] 
in the subject line.
Thanks.