A few comments/suggestions:
On 7 Feb 2005, at 13:59, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
Here's what I've noted so far that he might listen to: ========8<------------------------------------ Every patent is a regulation. The EU must reduce bureaucracy not add to it.
Software must remain a free market where motives for contributing are not limited to those with a commercial end large enough to offset the costs of the patent system. [this needs better wording]
How about something like:
"Patents only make sense where the cost to society and other innovators of permitting a monopoly over the invention is outweighed by the motivation provided to the inventor by the prospect of obtaining the patent. In the case of software, this is *never* the case, even for the cleverest of software inventions. For this reason, patents on software, rather than promoting innovation, actually stifle it."
This is the most concise way I can think of which explains what is fundamentally wrong with patents on software.
IFSO has always asked for this directive, we need legal certainly, we need to clear up the wording that made companies think that software ideas could become patentable. The Council's text does not give legal clarity.
Perhaps pointing out that the Council text actually removed amendments which attempted to provide definitions for the terms used in the Directive (eg. "technical contribution").
The costs of patent searches and the possible cost of litigation, whether the litigators claim is valid or not, are too high for all individuals and most businesses.
This is not just raising the barrier of entry to writing software, this is creating a bureaucratic barrier where there was none before.
The parliament fixed this directive by 75% majorities, JURI want it fixed by a 17 or 19 majority.
The US Federal Trade Commission says software idea patents cause nothing but harm. Economists say the same. PriceWaterHouseCooper say the same.
These points do a great job of explaining why software patents are bad, but perhaps isn't strong enough on explaining that the current Council text would permit software patents, given that its proponents claim that it doesn't (perhaps referring to the consultation done by Poland last year where a bunch of industry experts all, eventually, agreed that the Council directive *would* permit software patents).
Ian. -- Founder, The Freenet Project http://freenetproject.org/ CEO, Cematics Ltd http://cematics.com/ Personal Blog http://locut.us/~ian/blog/