taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Patents: FFII are reporting that ‘the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (JURI) has decided with a large majority to ask the Commission for a renewed referral of the software patents directive. With only two or three votes against and one abstention, the resolution had overwhelming support from the committee, and all-party backing.’

Michel Rocard MEP gave a very strong speech at the meeting with the Commissioner. Apart from noting several “inelegancies” by the Commission, such as not taking into account any of the Parliament’s substantive amendments in its recommendation to the Council, he also took issue with the Dutch and German governments ignoring their respective parliaments, the Irish Presidency’s sponsorship by Microsoft and the attempted ratifications of the political (dis)agreement at several fishery Council meetings.

He mentioned that at a meeting with the Polish government, the industry players confirmed that the Council text allowed pure software patents, and wondered how the Commission could continue claiming the reverse. He was also curious about how the Commission’s perfectly tautological definition of the concept “technical” could help in any way to distinguish between what is patentable and what is not. Despite his own abstention when voting on the restart later that day, the fact that almost everyone else supported it is probably his personal achievement.

The Commissioner made clear that “any agreement will need to strike a fair balance between different interests”, and that “a constructive dialogue between the Council and Parliament will be vital for an agreement”. He does have the option to deny a new first reading. But given the strength of feeling in the Parliament and the concerns of so many member states in the Council, the Parliament request looks like the best way to achieve a clean way forward for this Directive that everyone has been looking for.

This is good news for the anti-swpat side. Nul points for the Irish Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, who ‘had in the morning assured the JURI Committee that the Council would finally adopt its beleaguered Common Position text. He announced that “the Luxembourg Presidency has now received written assurances concerning the re-instatement of this issue as an A point at a forthcoming Council”. Given that A points are to be adopted without discussion, this left no possibilities for renewed negotiations in the Council’.

Tags: abstention, agreement, commission, committee, council, everyone, meeting, parliament, patents, software, way

Patents: This is really absurd — according to this ZDNet UK article, it now looks like the EU Council is considering railroading the EU software patent directive through, by hiding it as an ‘A-item’ in a Fisheries Council Meeting the week before xmas:

Laura Creighton, the vice-president of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), is concerned that the EU Council could be contemplating passing the directive without discussion in an unrelated meeting.

‘Before today it was possible for generous people to look charitably at this text (the proposed patent directive) as an example of a tragic mistake, not malice,’ said Creighton in a statement on the FFII Web site. ‘But not with this last-minute manoeuvring.’

‘Only the most committed opponent to the democratic process would believe that the proper response to the widespread consensus that there is something profoundly wrong with the Council’s text is to race it through with an A-item approval the week before Christmas in a Fisheries Council Meeting. The bad smell coming from Brussels has nothing to do with the fish.’

Reportedly, A-items are dealt with by asking the assembled councillors if they have any objections to any of the outstanding items. They’re not listed in detail at the meeting, so this way the directive can be passed in what is effectively a submarine (boom boom!) manner.

Related: Alan Cox has not been invited to the UK Patents office’s public meeting on software patents tomorrow.

In a Talkback to ZDNet UK’s earlier story highlighting the issue, Cox wrote: ‘I too was mysteriously overlooked despite having written to my MP and received an answer.’ …. Cox, who has previously been invited to speak on software patents at the EU, said the Patent Office apparently fears ‘every word I have to say about their plans’. He went on to add: ‘Unfortunately with all the underhand game playing both in the EU council of ministers and in UK government and patent circles it isn’t the slightest surprise.’

Also related: Jason Schultz (EFF) on the Commerce One web-services patent auction last week:

Here, the patents at issue were less valuable to companies that actually produce Web services products than they were to firms that produce nothing but lawsuits and licensing threats. In other words, patents like these have become worth more as weapons than as protections for companies competing in the marketplace.

Many have compared these new patent licensing firms to terrorists, and in some ways, the analogy is apt. When the Soviet Union collapsed, one of the biggest worries was that rogue military personnel might sell off one or more of the USSR’s nuclear missiles to a terrorist group. Securing those weapons became a top priority. The reason was fear – fear that the terrorists, who had little to nothing at stake in terms of world peace and national stability, would use the missiles to extort or manipulate the world political climate. Unlike the United States or China, which could be retaliated against and which had a stake in stability, terrorists were essentially immune from attack, and thrived on instability.

With the patents of bankrupt dot-coms, the dynamics are similar. Rogue licensing firms buy up these patents and then threaten legitimate innovators and producers. They have no products on which a countersuit can be based and no interest in stable marketplaces, competition or consumer benefit. Their only interest is in the bottom line.

While profit itself is often a worthy objective, it is not always synonymous with innovation. Every dollar a tech company pays to patent lawyers or licensing firms is one less dollar available for R&D or new hires. Thus, many companies that offer new products end up paying a ‘tax’ on innovation instead of receiving a reward. When this happens, it’s a signal that the patent system is broken. Forcing companies to pay lawyers instead of creating jobs and new products is the wrong direction for our economy to be headed and not the result our patent system should be promoting.

Tags: council, cox, directive, ffii, item, meeting, patent, patents, software, text, week

Patents: According to Ciaran O’Riordan of IFSO, one key aspect of the EU Council’s meeting on the software patent legalisation proposal hinged on the use of the phrase ‘as such’, to effectively sneak a loophole past the Council members:

I recommend that everyone listen to the recordings of the Council’s meeting. Transcripts are also linked from there, but the tone of voice etc. is interesting.

Anyway, basically, the people in the room didn’t understand the implications of the text (that’s our fault).

Bolkenstein added an amendment: “computer programs will not be patentable as such” - this (rightly) fooled most people into thinking that software would not be patentable. Really, it just means you can’t patent software as software, you have to patent “software running on a computer”. I think the rejected part of the German amendment would have closed this loophole. …..

Anyway, the point is that the Council members were on our side, we just hadn’t told them precisely what we want …. We told them “no to software patents”, and they think they’ve done that. We should have said “no to ‘as such”‘, and similar textual lobbying rather then implication lobbying.

Tags: amendment, aspect, computer, council, ifso, legalisation, loophole, meeting, patent, patents, software

Spam: DMA meeting to address spam (South Florida Biz Journal):

The DMA recently announced its support for e-mail self-regulatory guidelines, including:

…. 4. Marketers should not acquire e-mail addresses surreptitiously through automated mechanisms without the consumer/customer’s informed consent.

So, my question is: how exactly does a consumer provide ‘informed consent’ to having their e-mail addresses acquired ’surreptitiously through automated mechanisms’?

Tags: biz, consent, consumer, dma, florida, journal, meeting, south, spam, support

Beer: Irish Independent: Now ads can’t say it but you always knew it — Guinness IS
good for you:

One pint of Guinness a day can reduce the risk of blood clots that cause heart attacks, according to new research presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida.

… Scientists investigating the health benefits of drinking beer found that stouts like Guinness worked much better than lager. They said dark beers were packed with anti-oxidant compounds called flavonoids which help reduce damage to the lining of the arteries. … For maximum benefit a person would need to drink just over one pint of Guinness a day.

My grandfather was ‘prescribed’ a bottle of Guinness per day by his GP, to lower cholesterol and blood pressure. Mind you, that was in ’70s Ireland ;)

Tags: beer, blood, day, guinness, heart, independent, irish, meeting, pint, research, risk

USPTO seeks to block WIPO open source meeting.

(WIPO) is not the place for discussions about ‘open source’ software (…) a senior U.S. official argued on Monday. Reviewing the original mission of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), said Lois Boland, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) acting director of international relations, it is ‘clearly limited to the protection of intellectual property. To have a meeting whose primary objective is to waive or remove those protections seems to go against the mission.’

Boland was referring to a July request by a group of scientists, academics, open-source advocates and others for a meeting at WIPO on ‘open and collaborative projects,’ including open-source software. The WIPO secretariat initially replied favorably to the idea.

Well, that’s a shame. Let’s hope WIPO reconsider, because it really would be an interesting idea to have everyone involved talking about this stuff.

Tags: idea, meeting, mission, official, place, property, software, source, uspto, wipo

WIPO DG asked to convene meeting on open and collaborative projects to create public goods:

In recent years there has been an explosion of open and collaborative projects to create public goods. These projects are extremely important, and they raise profound questions regarding appropriate intellectual property policies. They also provide evidence that one can achieve a high level of innovation in some areas of the modern economy without intellectual property protection, and indeed excessive, unbalanced, or poorly designed intellectual property protections may be counter-productive. We ask that the World Intellectual Property Organization convene a meeting in calendar year 2004 to examine these new open collaborative development models, and to discuss their relevance for public policy.

I hope this gets somewhere; it’ll be interesting to see what the World Intellectual Property Organization has to say officially about open source, the Human Genome Project, the world wide web, and other unencumbered projects of this type.

Tags: evidence, explosion, innovation, intellectual, level, meeting, organization, property, wipo, world

“I spiked Ted Heath’s dinner”. “At a meeting in 1970, ad man Jeremy Scott sprinkled speed on the Tory leader’s canapes. His firm went on to win the party’s account, and Heath won the election.” … “I was really just trying to cheer everyone up,” he adds sheepishly. “The quantities I used were minute.”

Tags: account, dinner, election, firm, leader, man, meeting, party, speed, tory

C|Net reports:

Two weeks ago, six top financial institutions met privately with AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, IBM and other leading corporate instant messaging providers and urged them to build communications networks that interoperate. …. The meeting, which took place at Merrill Lynch’s New York offices, was among the first convened by the Instant Messaging Standards Board (IMSB), a newly created consortium led by financial services firms Lehman Brothers, J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, UBS and Deutsche Bank.

Holy shit, that’s a lot of gorillas! (via Doc).

Tags: aol, ibm, interoperate, lynch, meeting, merrill, microsoft, morgan, time, warner