Europatents to return in 2006? [LWN.net]

One problem with governments is that, unsurprisingly, powerful interests try to direct governmental power toward their own ends. Those who would fight power grabs quickly learn a hard lesson: those pushing for more power usually need only win once, while those who oppose them must win over and over again. This dynamic can be seen, for example, in the current broadcast flag debate in the U.S. This flag has already been defeated once, but nobody doubts that it will return, perhaps repeatedly.

In Europe, the debate on software patents is likely to go the same way. Those who have a substantial amount to gain if software patents are adopted throughout the EU are unlikely to simply give up just because they lost the battle last July. So software patents in Europe will almost certainly be back. Now it is starting to look like the vehicle for the next attempt to impose software patents might be a process called the "Community Lisbon Programme."

This program is part of an effort to improve the health of European economies by making the EU as a whole more efficient and competitive. It is a large undertaking touching on many areas, including regulation, internal markets, environmental issues, global trade agreements and more. Deep within a recently-released document [PDF] on the implementation of the program is a section on intellectual property rights ("IPR"). It reads, in part:

Companies and their clients need IPR which stimulates innovation, provides a stable context in which to make investment decisions, and encourages the development of efficient new business models. The debate engendered by the proposed directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions has demonstrated that framing IPR rules which balance the needs of all stakeholders is by no means easy. The Commission will therefore launch a dialogue with industry and other interested parties in 2006 to determine what more might usefully be done to provide European industry with a sound IPR framework.

It is not hard to imagine that the result of this process could be a renewed directive establishing software patents in Europe. This time, however, it could be buried within a much larger chunk of EU-level industrial policy legislation, and, thus, harder to defeat.

Clearly, the free software community needs to be among the "other interested parties" participating in this process. We have many thoughts on what makes up a "sound IPR framework," and they should be heard early on. In the later stages of this program, when it truly comes into public view, it will be too late to effect changes on issues like patents.

(Log in to post comments)

So-called "IPR"

Posted Oct 20, 2005 18:53 UTC (Thu) by diakka (guest, #10310) [Link]

This is a good point. But it is a catchy and easy to use term. I think that there should be an alternative to it, something that indicates the nature of a patent. Maybe something like "invention monopoly privileges" or IMP.

So-called "IPR"

Posted Oct 20, 2005 20:47 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

It really doesn't do any good to argue about whether something is a right or a privilege, because they're the same thing except for the level at which a right or privilege is granted.

In the case of IPR, the R could simply stand for the legal right that a government may create by making patent laws.

So-called "IPR"

Posted Oct 21, 2005 1:48 UTC (Fri) by diakka (guest, #10310) [Link]

On the contrary, it has the potential to do a lot good. When playing politics, your choice of words is of the utmost importance.

The point of selecting the word 'privilege' is that when most people think of a privilege, they think of something that is earned, may require a certian amount of responsibility to use, and something that could be taken away if abused. When people think of a right, they think of 'inalienable rights' or 'god given rights'. It's a very powerful propaganda word.

Sure, you could argue that there is no real legal difference between rights and privileges, I might even agree with that point. But the fight against software patents is mostly PR and politics. If we want to win, we have to convince people. We don't want to be thought of as those techie loonies that wanna take away our "Intellectual Property Rights". We would have a much stronger position if people thought of us as trying to restore balance and competition, stop patent hoarding and attempts by large corporation to litigate their comptition out of business.

There have been many people who expressed dislike for the term IP and IPR. Maybe my suggestion is not the opimal one, but without an alternative, people are just going to keep using it, decreasing our chances of winning.

So-called "IPR"

Posted Oct 21, 2005 15:46 UTC (Fri) by pdundas (subscriber, #15203) [Link]

The catchy term for these "rights" should probably include key words and concepts like "monopoly" or "restriction" (to emphasise their restrictive and anti-competitive nature) and maybe even "temporary" (to emphasise that it's NOT intended to be perperually extended).

Any more concepts that should be incorporated?

It would also be nice if the issues were discussed in the context of fair dealing / fair use rights (as in "it's not about enabling piracy").

IPR ==> Intellectual Proprietary Restrictions

Posted Oct 22, 2005 2:28 UTC (Sat) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link]

We can simply adopt the same letters and promulgate and alternative expansion for them. One that gives our take on it. I use to say (as frequently as my managers and users would listen that NFS stands for "No Flippin' Security (insert the expletive of your choice in the middle of that)" which rarely failed to get a laugh but also drove home the point.

So, calling IPR the "intellectual proprietary restrictions" emphasizes this aspect of the concept and rides on the coat-tails of all other usage of the abbreviation.

JimD

IPR ==> Intellectual Proprietary Restrictions

Posted Oct 23, 2005 15:23 UTC (Sun) by fergal (subscriber, #602) [Link]

The problem with trying to hijack the opposition's acronyms is that most people already have a meaning in their head for them. When an anti-swpat person is quoted and he says "IPR" the quote is unlikely to also contain the alternate definition, however if he had said "IMP" then it would have to be explained alongside the quote as "Intellectual Monopoly Privilege".

IPR ==> Intellectual Proprietary Restrictions

Posted Oct 26, 2005 18:24 UTC (Wed) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]

Perhaps "Intrusive Proprietary Restrictions" would be good?

Europatents to return in 2006?

Posted Oct 20, 2005 17:54 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

It seems clear from the US situation that software patents do not "[provide] a stable context in which to make investment decisions", considering that Microsoft can't avoid infringing unexpected patents. The new business models we've seen software patents encourage are hardly "efficient" (in that they involve companies that don't make any contribution getting money from actual producers). And the evidence currently is that software patents don't stimulate innovation, but rather stiffle innovation which occurs naturally in the course of development for other purposes. So this is equally an opportunity to explicitly prohibit software patents and prevent them from being issued.

So many things in government are really like ko threats in go: they are in an unsettled state beforehand, and defeating an initiative leaves them again in an unsettled state. More effort is still needed to actually put the matter to rest, and this unfortunately often doesn't get done.

Europatents to return in 2006?

Posted Oct 24, 2005 6:24 UTC (Mon) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link]

Maybe this is a crazy idea, but this could be a good chance non only for fighting software patents, but also for requiring open data formats.

The reasoning would be the following: if a piece of software allows me to produce (save to disk) a file on which I have copyright, then I should also have the legal right to know how the file is structured, and access all the information also without that piece of software that I originally used to save the file.

This could be pushed for two reasons: it undoubtedly promotes competition and technical innovation (which is the goal they are seeking), and it looks as a reasonable right to have in the first place, because if I own the IP rights on a piece of information, how is it that I don't have the right to access it as I wish?

After all, the wording of the initiative's goals are sound and reasonable.

Why not trying to use this to promote other useful "reforms", besides fighting software patents?