12.28.11
Patent Lawyers Push for Software Patents, Poorly
Continuation of this post, this post, and this post
Summary: A deeper look at the lobbying for software patents in Europe and more from Marty Goetz
THE unitary patent is the back door for software patents in Europe, so patent lawyers are rallying for this extra business in their blogs, using dogma and drama (“Are EU ministers driving us towards a European patent disaster?”). This one blog post says: “The AmeriKat encourages all members of our very large “interest group” (a.k.a patent litigators, attorneys, users, academics, judges, etc) to keep up the pressure on and conversations with their national governments and MEPs. Its not too late to change this for the better and to work to achieve the original aim of creating a user-friendly and efficient unitary patent system.”
How shameful. These are just a parasitical element of society. One tweeter user says that the “patent microcosm unhappy with #unitary #patent: they do not want not-patent judge to put her nose into patent law” (source: Gérald Sédrati-Dinet)
The lawyers say that the “Polish Presidency hopes to obtain agreement today on the location of the Unified Patent Court.”
” These are just a parasitical element of society.”Yes, the money-grabbing patent lawyers will cling onto anything to pass laws that harm European citizens, just so that they — the lawyers — can extract another tax from the population. Those who grow a meta-industry at the expense of producers rely on continued expansion of their taxing mechanism, which requires litigation, paperwork, and legal complications that necessitate advice. “Chairman W Pawlak (PL) said EU Council has reached an agreement on EU patent package but didn’t disclose any details,” Oh, really? That smells wrong. As put by some like Rui Seabra over at Twitter, the “panel is filled with filthy people, straight from the patent regimes. So sick…”
Here is an alternative view from a different type of lawyers, ones like Carlo Piana who recognise that software patents need to go.
The president of the FFII points out “Yet another patent lawyer spamming programmers with patent claims, talks about “certainty”, but for who?”
Patently-O keeps pushing its pro-software patents agenda as one would expect and contrariwise, in a magazine with Microsoft connections there is a more balanced coverage with counterparts doing the same. Now that we see new patents on geometry/math we must really decide on whether laws of nature should be patentable. Software patents booster Marty Goetz is back to his boosting, only to be tackled by weakness of his arguments, such as: “Goetz mentions the software industry being an industry, so is the music industry, that’s why music is patentable”
“On objective grounds of reason and also based on economic studies, software patents haven’t a place in society.”Here is another very inane statement from the mouths of proponents of software patents: “Dirk Elias from Fraunhofer told me that “MP3 patents were possible to obtain because they’re algorithms, not software, which is allowed”.”
Hilarious.
On objective grounds of reason and also based on economic studies, software patents haven’t a place in society. But can we beat the interests of greed? Can we push back against the parasitical element which made up the lobby for software patents? Can its expansion into Europe be impeded? It’s up to us because passivity will ensure the parasites get politicians’ ears and eventually get their way. At stake: the software industry. █
