Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patents != Innovation

Digital Majority continues to tackle the software patent issues in Europe. It also covers the sad situation elsewhere in the world. The following example, which comes from India, just shows how badly misunderstood the value of protecting ideas really is.

I find not only the proposed law and the reasoning behind it worrying, but also the very uncritical way it is reported in Science. There seems to be no questioning of the equation "patents = innovation".


Criticism in this case is directed at ScienceMag, but as the following item shows, they do not necessarily fail to cover another side of this equation. Here is their older paper called "When Patents Threaten Science".

Patents should not be used to protect laws of nature, products of nature, or mathematical formulas.


Taking the above into consideration, it remains worrisome that centralisation in Europe, which also takes law into account, may be bad news as far as software patents are concerned. From FFII:

IAM magazine admits that a central court can legalize software patents



[...]

Imagine a freaky judge at a central patent court adopting the same decision as the english judge Kitchin has made recently, and you get software patents validated Europe wide.


Down there in Australia, the system has already been ruined by America-style DMCA and software patents. The following article, which may contain the biases of a Linux conference (just taking context into account), does not believe that this poses any real danger to Free software.

Efforts to overturn software patents -- a major concern in the open source community -- were likely to fail, Weatherall suggested. "I don't think the fight is over, but I don't think you're going to kill software patents," she said. "There's a lot of them. Every one cost in the five figures to apply for. The amount of investment is enormous, and that's the sort of thing you have to tear down to tear down software patents."

Weatherall also advised concerned hackers not to become ridiculously obsessed with legal issues. "Don't obsess about law reform and changes in the law. Your best protection during law reform processes is success. if you are coding well then people will go out of their way to protect you."


As the new Micro Trend boycott illustrates, along with the backlash against NetApp, there are always good people out there who are willing to challenge spurious/junk patents. This make attempted cases against FOSS nothing but a loss of money to the plaintiff. It also harm's the plaintiff's image as companies like SCO (or even the RIAA) have already taught us. With Free software being so widely deployed, suing FOSS is always guaranteed to be a case of suing your own customers. It's insane.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Five (or Three) Years Without Social Control Media
Glyn Moody quit X (Twitter)
Why GNU/Linux is Growing
There's growing interest in GNU/Linux right now because people do not fancy buying a new PC just to 'upgrade' (more spying) Windows
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 19, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 19, 2025
Electronics in People's Bedrooms
Modern technology not only blurred the gap between "functions" of rooms
Gemini Links 19/04/2025: Contingencies, GTD, and Old Computers
Links for the day
Links 19/04/2025: Economic Races, Charm Offensives, and USB-C Rants
Links for the day
Links 19/04/2025: "Infantilization at Big Tech" and LLM Slop Abused in Defiance of Workplace Rules/Policies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/04/2025: Palm Addiction and Real Experts
Links for the day
Egypt is Controlled by Google, Not Microsoft
Moving from Microsoft to Google is not the answer
Microsofters Say They Cannot Find a Job (That They Want) Because of Techrights, But Techrights Merely Reported on Their Behaviour
Quit pointing the finger at people who are recipients of abuse or merely mention the abuse
Free Software and Standards - Not Marketing Blitz - Needed Amid Growing Severity of Dependency on Hostile Suppliers (or Another Country's Sovereignty)
ZenDiS can be described as the "Center for Digital Sovereignty of Public Administration"
When It Comes to the Web, Google is Evil and It Destroys the Web's Integrity With LLM Slop
Even academia, which is meant to keep standards high, is being lured into LLM slop
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 18, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 18, 2025
Links 18/04/2025: "Fentanylware (TikTok) Exodus Continues", Chinese Weapons Allegedly in Russia Already
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/04/2025: Price of Games and State of Tinylog
Links for the day
Sounds Like IBM is Preparing for Mass Layoffs/Redundancies in Red Hat, Albeit in "PIP" (Performance Improvement Plan) or "Relocation" Clothing
This isn't the "old" IBM; they're applying pressure by confusion and humiliation
Gemini Links 17/04/2025: Role of Language and Back to Mutt for E-mail
Links for the day
"Sayonara" (さよなら), Microsoft
Windows had fallen below iOS in some countries
Links 18/04/2025: Layoffs at Microsoft Infosys and Qt Becoming Increasingly Proprietary (Plus Slop)
Links for the day
Google News is Dying
treating MElon's algorithmic/biased site as a source of verified news
Microsoft's Attack Dogs Have Failed. Now What?
It would be utterly foolish to assume that Microsoft has any intention of changing
All Your "Github Projects" Will be Gone One Day (Just Like Skype)
If you have code you wish to share and keep, then start learning how to do so on your own
To Understand Who's Truly Controlling You Follow the Trail of Censorship (or Self-Censorship)
Do not let media steal and steer the narrative; CoCs are not about "social justice", they're about corporate domination
Fedora Already Lost Its Soul Under IBM
Fedora used to be very strict compared to many other distros and it had attracted very bright volunteers
Microsoft is Still Attacking GNU/Linux and the Net
Microsoft bribed the government using money that did not even exist
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 17, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 17, 2025
Gemini Links 18/04/2025: Pinephone Pro and Linux is too Easy
Links for the day