- From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@realmeasures.dyndns.org>
- Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 16:11:50 -0500
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
(Forwarded from Interesting People list, farber@cis.upenn.edu) -------- Original Message -------- Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 14:22:58 -0500 From: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> ------ Forwarded Message From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@realmeasures.dyndns.org> Organization: Real Measures Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 14:06:51 -0500 To: farber@cis.upenn.edu Dave: Don't believe this supposedly "surprised BSA" spin. Thought you'd like to see a couple of pieces from EuroLinux on this proposal. Mingorance gets to play shocked about some details, I guess, while the effect of this piece is that people will think this proposal counters the "big bad" BSA, thereby helping rationalize a reform of software patent policy and thwarting EuroLinux's strong movement to *stop* software patents *in principle* in Europe. Their petition against software patents currently has 100,000 signatures, including a large contingent of software companies. Seth Johnson http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr17.html?LANG=en EC/BSA Collusion Detected For immediate Release Paris, Munich, Amsterdam - 2002-02-19 - The European Commission is likely to approve this Wednesday a proposal of directive on software patents. EuroLinux has managed to obtain a draft version of the proposed directive. The same document was sent to a few official representatives in European national governments. Incidentally, the author of this document, according to the Microsoft Word file, is Francisco Mingorance (franciscom@bsa.org), patent expert and director of public policy at BSA (Business Software Alliance), an association which represents the interests of large US software publishers in Europe. Software patents are a major legal issue in the information society. < SNIP > EuroLinux hopes that, by making public this draft document, the European Commission will be encouraged to publish without delay the final version of the proposed directive, at the same time as the expected press release and to provide the same level of information to European Citizens as to the BSA. Draft Directive Please download the draft directive at http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/proposal.doc --- And: http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/eubsa-swpat0202/ European Commission 2002-02-20: Draft Proposal to Make All Ideas Patentable The European Commission proposes to legalise the granting of patents on computer programs as such in Europe. The proposed regulation is embedded in a long advocacy text which tries to give a rationale for this proposal. This text disregards the opinions of most if not all respected software developers and economists, instead relies on dogmatic statements about patents in general as well as some unsubstantiatable claims and even some outright lies, citing as its only source of information about the real world of software a study from BSA (anti-piracy alliance dominated by Microsoft and a few other US vendors) about the importance of copyright enforcement. This study apparently does not even deal with the subject of patents. The draft itself was apparently written on behalf of the EC by an employee of BSA. Below we cite the complete proposal, adding some links and annotations. < SNIP > Now who wrote this document and what does BSA have to do with it? The final version of the document was adopted by the European Commission on the morning of 2002-02-20 and published at noon of that day on the web page of the Industrial Property Unit together with an press release and an FAQ. An almost completely identical directive draft proposal (PDF, MSWord) started circulating among national government officials in mid february. Although it is dated 2001, knowledgable people said that it was "hot off the presses from Brussels". Interestingly, the MSWord version contains a hidden author's field with the name Francisco Mingorance. This proves that he has at least revised the draft, and further evidence also suggests that he is in fact the main author. Mingorance is the current director of public policy for Europe at BSA and a longtime subscriber of an eurolinux-related patents mailing list. Until recently, he used to work as a fundraising manager for an AIDS help organisation in Geneva. In that function, he tried hard to defend the patent system against what he called "vilification" by the supporters of the South African government's battle for lower drug prices. In this and other discussions he demonstrated a thoughrough acquaintance with the patent system. BSA's by far strongest corporate member is Microsoft. While BSA as a whole has no interest in the patent system, Microsoft is engaging in an active crusade for everything that hurts open source software, including software patents. Microsoft's PR strategy is simple: it links proprietary software to "intellectual property", "wealth of nations" and "jobs", while opensource software is claimed to be opposed to all these. Likewise, patents are linked to proprietary software and the patent critics are portrayed as advocates of some unrealistic "open source business model". Although these assertions are grossly untrue -- proprietary software is, just like free software, based on copyright and threatened by patents -- they seem plausible from a naive reader's point of view. Mingorance's proposal uses this same strategy. It cites some obscure BSA studies about the importance of proprietary software to help cultivate this misconception while completely ignoring all informed discussions about the problems of software patents. It should be noted that the EU Commission's Greenpaper cites Microsoft as a success model and bases its assertion that "software patents have had a very positive impact on the software industry in the US" solely on the argument that "Microsoft already owns 400 software patents". < SNIP > And finally: -------- Original Message -------- Date: 20 Feb 2002 14:22:28 +0100 From: PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de> To: patents@aful.org Paris, Munich, 2002-20-02 - The European Commission has just published a press release on software patents, as well as a directive. Its content is is, apart from a few minor wording differences, exactly the same as the BSA document EuroLinux obtained last week. However, the document of the directive is incomplete. All the arguments which allows to decide whether this directive is legal or not according to the Rome Treaty have disappeared. The press release also contains many sentences which are in contradiction with what is written in the directive. < SNIP > In particular, the commission uses a 1998 BSA report to justify the directive. This BSA report contains no arguments related to patents! Also, the Commission has neglected official reports in France and Germany which show the negative impact of patents on innovation and also show that copyright is the prefered protection of SMEs for the software economy. The directive fails to define what is technical. It considers software to be technical. Therefore, this directive allows to patent anything innovative implemented with software, including business methods. In fact, the directive goes even further than that. It removes the concept of 'patentable inventions' from the European patent system, deciding instead that any "computer-implemented" idea per se "belongs to a field of technology" and is therefore a patentable invention. It legalises more than 30000 patents on trivial computing and business ideas already granted by the EPO under this regime. The only question where it deviates from EPO practise is that of the claim form (see our explanations in the EuroLinux Warning[1]). However, even here the directive is worse than we thought: it contains a loophole through which computer programs can nonetheless be claimed as "computer program products", and it does not explicitely disallow program claims. We urge everyone to read carefully the directive rather than the press release. The press release contains many sentences which say the exact opposite of what is actually written in the directive. This directive is not a moderate compromise proposal but a rare piece of patent extremism. ------ End of Forwarded Message For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Received on Thursday, 21 February 2002 16:13:16 UTC