Bonum Certa Men Certa

New Zealand's Legislation Regarding Software Patents Shows That the US is the Boss

World Map patents
The software patents "red threat"



Summary: New Zealand is the latest island to be colonised by the USPTO (headed by an IBM veteran), using lobbyists for multinationals who impose their will upon a vastly-outnumbered local population

WHO is responsible for the latest travesty in New Zealand? Let's begin this from the top. People in New Zealand are not just outnumbered by sheep; they are also outweighed by drones from the United States based on the latest news. Here we have a video which was recently uploaded to YouTube. It hopefully sheds light on the situation which we covered many times this year.



4.3M





The bad news from New Zealand was probably first covered by IDG, which cited NZICT -- a lobbying group whose agenda and funding we exposed in previous posts [1, 2, 3, 4]. The "NZ" in "NZICT" easily gives the illusion that it's actually about New Zealand, as opposed to multinationals (mostly from the United States).

Software patents, apparently on the way to being ruled out for New Zealand after a Select Committee decision on the Patents Bill, might not be completely excluded after all.

The committee earlier this year inserted a clause in the second-reading copy of the Bill [Section 15(3A)] reading simply “a computer program is not a patentable invention.”

On June 9 there was a meeting between Ministry of Economic Development (MED) officials and a delegation of local and international software companies led by Brett O’Riley of industry lobby NZICT Group.


Glyn Moody described this as "scandalous backroom dealing (note presence of Microsoft and IBM)" and NZICT must be just one of the culprits he referred to. Law firms in New Zealand said "yes" to software patents, whereas software developers (not just Free software developers) said "no", as usual. It's a battle between monopolies (and their lawyers) and actual developers everywhere we look, even in Europe.

Regarding this latest development, the president of the FFII wrote: "New Zealand to copy EPO, and pass a law that does not exclude software patents, for decoration only"

“Many would welcome a comment on IBM's role in advocating for software patents in New Zealand.”
      --Simon Phipps
Later on he pointed out that "Big Multinationals will write software patent law in NZ" based on the quote which says: "our group will be working on developing this for submission"

Amazing.

So software patents are voted on not by people of New Zealand, who have no control over their laws, either. Simon Phipps has written to IBM's Bob Sutor, asking: "Many would welcome a comment on IBM's role in advocating for software patents in New Zealand. Can you help?"

Red Hat's Wildeboer, who used to lobby against software patents along with other software Freedom proponents, writes: "Somehow I already expect a giant rant from Florian Mueller on this"

Wildeboer is right. Müller already uses his Slashdot account (which he resumed using some months ago) to say: "Simon Phipps, former chief open source executive of Sun Microsystems, has just asked IBM's open source VP Bob Sutor via Twitter (with a reference to this very slashdot story) to clarify IBM's role in lobbying for software patents in New Zealand. It will be interesting to see Bob Sutor's response, should there ever be one.

"When it comes to patents, IBM stands for International Bullying Machines"

Here is the summary submitted to Slashdot by Ciaran:

ciaran_o_riordan writes "Due to lobbying by a group called NZICT, New Zealand's parliament is now set to let go of its proposal to ban software patents. Patent attorney Steven Lundberg announced the details in a blog entry. This was quickly deleted, but not before it got stored in Google's cache. Here we can read that 'Hon Simon Power has asked MED [Ministry of Economic Development] to work with the Parliamentary Counsel's Office to redraft the section along the lines of the European Patent Convention.' Which is exactly the opposite of March's announcement that 'computer software should be excluded from patent protection as software patents can stifle innovation and competition, and can be granted for trivial or existing techniques.' The background to this case gives every reason to be hopeful, if computer users in New Zealand get active again."


Ciaran's pages on the subject [1, 2] ought to give some background information too. The news from New Zealand is celebrated by some sort of a lobbying blog for software patents (which took down the original post):

New Zealand looks like its reversing course on software patent protection. On June 9, there was a meeting between representatives of NZ Ministry of Economic Development (MED) and representatives of NZICT Group. It appears that New Zealand is likely to ultimately adopt an approach to software patents that is consistent with the EPO’s position. My thanks to Jim Hallenbeck (Schwegman) and Paik Saber (IBM) for relaying this information.

Here is the summary of the meeting provided by Brett O’Riley CEO of NZICT:

Our representative delegation met with MED in Wellington yesterday. This was to discuss the formal submission we had made to Hon Simon Power last week covering our concerns about the proposed draft legislation.


Over a Twitter, the president of the FFII states: "NZ patent lawyer mentions that software patents are legal in Germany, thanks to the Microsoft FAT decision"

The FFII's president links to the lobbyists above ("patents4software.com"), specifically one of their first posts, which was about FAT.

"American lawyers are free to mess with their own domestic laws," states the FFII's own account. Yes, it comes from the US, interfering with other people's laws in other countries. It's almost as though the law of New Zealand is being written by Americans. TechDirt too calls them lobbyists:

There was widespread happiness among software developers a few months back, when it was announced that New Zealand had decided to explicitly ban software patents. Of course, it didn't take long for a lobbying campaign to kick off from those opposed to this provision, and it appears the lobbying was effective, such that software patents will now be allowed -- though, they will still be somewhat limited (as they are in Europe). So, it's not quite as bad as the situation in the US. A New Zealand patent attorney posted a letter from the head of the lobbying group discussing this shift. While that blog post has since been deleted, as of this posting Google still has the cache.


Citizens of New Zealand should protest. Their patent laws have just been hijacked by foreign interests which will hurt local software developers, including Free software developers. It's bad for the population as a whole.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Lunduke Belongs in 4Chan
Assuming Microsoft Lunduke is aware of the full context, he is now trolling not one but two decent organisations
 
In Europe and in India Richard Stallman Need Not Duck Anymore, People Trying to Cancel His Talk Have No Sway
the last time a talk by Dr. Stallman got canceled was about a year ago
Back From a Short Break
We can now resume and try to stick to the usual pace
Links 17/02/2025: LLMs Failing and Patreon Support Becoming a Burden to Bloggers
Links for the day
Links 17/02/2025: Blogroll Conundrum; Research, Scientists Under Siege
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 16, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 16, 2025
Links 16/02/2025: Nostalgia for Physical Media and the US Government Actively Promotes Pro-Kremlin Politicians in the EU
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/02/2025:Life, Cynicism, and languages
Links for the day
Links 16/02/2025: Oligarchs "Collect Your Data and Control Your World", Global Temperatures Shoot Up
Links for the day
Promoting Microsoft Windows With LLM Slop
What is the policy at BetaNews regarding LLM slop?
Alex Oliva, the Potential 'Successor' of RMS, Has a New Web Site
More freedom for Alex Oliva
Links 16/02/2025: "Microsoft Is Laying Off Employees" and Internal Dissent Brewing at Facebook Over Regime Complicity
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 15, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 15, 2025
Links 15/02/2025: Harms to Health, Public Domain, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: On Autistic People, AuraGem Over HTTPS
Links for the day
The Cyber Show (C|S) Speaks of the "Rise of the Nerd Reich."
This 'Valentine Episode' is quite good
Azure is Turning 17 This Year, Still Losing Money and Staff
Hallmark of pyramid schemes, deriving "value" out of things that do not really exist?
Strong Momentum for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as Winter Approaches Its End in Boston or in the Northern Hemisphere
FSF's founder, Richard Stallman, gives another talk in Italy in 9 days from now
The 'Drunken Plagiarists' Are Harming Journalism About GNU/Linux
They lessen the incentive to do real journalism abut GNU/Linux
Female Nazis and racist Swiss women
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Richard Stallman on RISC-V and Free Hardware
Invidious is under attack by Google
Links 15/02/2025: Erasing of American Science and Tesla SLAPPing Critics
Links for the day
IDG 'Reviews' of GNU/Linux Now Contain LLM Slop
It's typically ads or commercials... or sometimes spin disguised as news
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: Spectacles and "Before Sunset", Moving Domains Out of the US
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Only $17,482 Million Left, "Cash on Hand" Sank 40 Billion Dollars in 2 Years
Microsoft runs low on money in the bank
YouTube Layoffs Mean That YouTube is Still Losing a Lot of Money (Net Income or Profit Almost Definitely Negative)
In more recent years Google defunded many vloggers
In Gopher and Gemini Protocol People Abandon Services Based in the United States
There's no resistance whatsoever
Python and Microsoft: Pandas Should Have Known OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft Excel Are Different and Competing Things
now we're meant to think that in order to open ODF files we need some functions with "Excel" in their name
Not Only Windows, Surface, and "Hey Hi" PCs; Microsoft's Hardware Ventures Are a Dumpster Fire; HoloLens Mixed Reality Hardware Now Axed Altogether and Staff is Miserable
Microsoft is in a terrible state
Certificate Authority (CA) Let's Encrypt Now Down to TEN (0.3% of the Whole) in Geminispace
The number of capsules that use Let's Encrypt is, according to Lupa, about to fall to single-digit figures
Links 15/02/2025: University Price Hikes and Copyright Action Against Slop Companies
Links for the day
Slopwatch: All Those New 'Articles' Are Fake and Crafted by Chatbots (LLM Slop)
Google News is promoting these as "Linux" news; they're not even made by humans
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 14, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 14, 2025