patentwahnsinn - 24.12.2004 - 29.6.2005

Banalpatent again

Amazon receives patent on "related products" - yes, exactly, customers who bought this product also showed interest in the following additional products now has a US patent. And of course, something like this would never be enforceable as a patent in Europe (and pigs can fly). It's great to see how innovative software patents are and how important they are for strengthening the software industry - because with such a patent, one could make a fortune in the warning letter paradise of Germany and kick out annoying competition. By the way, they already have the patent on one-click ordering. Yes, web shops could become a legal minefield if the EU Council's software patent directive prevails. And patent lawyers will become fat and rich ...

Entrepreneurs against software patents

Software patents: Entrepreneurs accuse Union of "electoral fraud":

Entrepreneurial initiatives from several federal states warn in an open letter (PDF) the CDU and CSU members of the European Parliament against "committing systematic electoral fraud" and "causing entrepreneurial misjudgments (...)." The Union should finally admit that it is closer to Microsoft than to the German middle class.

One trigger was SAP:

The Walldorf-based SAP AG recently placed full-page ads in EU magazines urging the proposed directive. SAP demands "patent protection (...) for innovations in IT, as created by SAP (...)." However, these innovations lie exclusively in the software sector. SAP software is used for accounting, order processing, and financial reporting. The SAP ad mentions the term "business processes" (between companies and within) three times.

Of course, the Justice Ministry sees this massive incompetence quite differently and still claims that pure software patents are not possible - even though reality has long since said otherwise. And so we (open-source programmers as well as medium-sized software companies) are being sacrificed on the altar of the software industry - which then politely thanks with greater job cuts and relocation of software production to countries outside the EU.

What a mess

Hypocritical Phonies

State Secretary sees potential for improvements in software patent directive - while her boss lobbies for the Council's proposal in the European Parliament. Of course, they are so well informed by software patent opponents - as we could see how the government implemented the Bundestag's request ...

Apple sued over iTunes interface

Patent madness this time against Apple:

These areas include iTunes' menu selection process, the ability of the software to transfer music tracks to a portable music player, and search capabilities such as sorting music tracks by genre, artist and album.

Translated: the guy claims to have patents on how to select menus in iTunes, copying music files to a portable player, and sorting music tracks by genre, artist, and album. Great. Very high level of creativity.

Of course, patent supporters will now have plenty of reasons why this would not be possible in Europe. And they will refer such nonsense as the one above to the realm of fantasy until the cases are actually tried in European courts.

It's amusing when a company that likes to wield the lawsuit club against copied interfaces finds itself on the receiving end of such a lawsuit club. But the matter itself is concerning - what is being done with patents today has nothing to do with the original intention - protecting the inventor from exploitation by powerful companies.

MEP overturns software patents

After all, the EU deputies are swinging into line with the EU Council. That's what people like the concentrated incompetence of the German government - some call her the Federal Minister of Justice - imagine democracy to be. There was a clear vote of the European Parliament. There was a unanimous resolution of the Bundestag factions. There were clear protests and clear warnings from experts. And who will win in the end? The lobbyists.

If that's what democracy is supposed to be, then I'm Heinzelmann. And then the prolethicians in Berlin are surprised when the citizens reject the EU constitution - which would have given such mummery a constitutional cloak.

On the altar of monopolization, these idiots sacrifice the medium-sized software industry and open source. Just to crawl up to some slimy lobbyists - for which the companies they represent then diligently cut jobs, sell off parts of the company to non-European investors, and move production abroad.

Great strategy.

The Audacity is Hard to Surpass

What the Minister of Justice is saying: only minor corrections needed to the software patent directive. Yes, great, shopping carts for web shops are already patented - and it is exactly these trivial patents that are criticized in this nonsense. But Zypries continues to lie.

How Our Government Is Lying to Us Again

"Germany" as a hype man for software patents in the EU Council - about how the concentrated incompetence - also known as Federal Minister of Justice - hitches itself up to the cart of interest groups and screws us all. Not only does the German government act against a resolution of the Bundestag, it also contradicts its own statements. We really live in a banana republic.

End of a Potato Variety: Soon No More Linda

From as early as January, but since I'm currently cooking potatoes, it reminded me again: The End of a Potato Variety: Soon No More Linda. About the attempt by the previous patent holder to restrict the availability of the potato variety Linda to avoid competition - a good example of what patents and free market really mean: ultimately only monopolistic tendencies and monopolistic consolidations.

Does anyone really believe that potatoes and algorithms are so different that such activities will not occur in the IT industry when implementing software patents? Who is the winner in such a situation - the customer for whom a potato variety disappears, the small farmer or greengrocer who can no longer supply a well-known product to their customers, or the large corporation that holds the patent? Actually, the patent would have expired, actually, real competition could now begin. Actually ...

By the way, the loss of the potato variety Linda is more than annoying - it was one of the few varieties I like and that also survived Jutta ...

Software patents in real application

Who wants to see the full horror of software patents in real application: search for the patents DE69901832 (German patent) or EP1081612 (European patent) in the patent database (unfortunately, there are no permanent links to patents in this patent database - why not? Stupid software).

A truly great invention: the identification of a session in a web application is not transported in the path part of a URI, in a cookie, or a URI parameter, but in the hostname (wildcard A-record makes it possible). A patent has been granted for something like this - although there are supposedly no pure software patents in Germany. Where exactly is the definition of technicity in this patent? The connection to a tangible device? This is a pure algorithm patent.

If you read through the description and claims, you get the chills: in the description, it is written that extracting the encoding from the path part would be complex and require a lot of computing power - probably this is supposed to be the reason for patentability, so to speak, more efficient access to information. And in the claim, nothing else is described than the use of HTTP/1.1 virtual hosts in combination with a wildcard A-record (or many A-record entries that point to the same IP), so that the session can be extracted from the hostname (which is sent as a header). A truly great intellectual achievement - presumably the entire creative height of it lies in the formulation of the patent application, but certainly not in the actual algorithm or the encoding ...

The patent office simply patents any nonsense that is submitted. There seems to be no control at all - anyone who wants to do something against a patent must first laboriously apply for and enforce the deletion of the patent. If the patentability of algorithms is further facilitated, we will find even more such absurdities. Because if the patent office is already overwhelmed today to carry out these basic checks on general patentability, it will certainly get worse with the new regulation. And this is supposed to bring economic growth? Probably only for patent lawyers ...

Found in the dead-tree version of the current Linux Magazine on page 102.

Softwarepatents: Industry lobbying with stacked cards? - if you already think you need to play with false cards, you should be more careful not to get caught ...

PostgreSQL 8.0.2 released with patent fix

Just found: PostgreSQL 8.0.2 released with patent fix. PostgreSQL has therefore received a new minor version in which a patented caching algorithm (arc) was replaced with a non-patented one (2Q). The interesting part: this is one of the patents that IBM has released for open source. And why did they switch anyway? Because IBM has released these patents for open source use, but not for commercial use - PostgreSQL, however, is under the BSD license, which explicitly allows completely free commercial use.

For PostgreSQL itself, this would not have been a problem: as long as it remains BSD, the use of the IBM patent would not have caused any problems. Only a later license change - such as when someone chooses BSD software as the basis for a commercial product - would have been excluded.

A nice example of how even liberally handled software patents cause problems. Because medium-sized companies that build commercial products on open source would have lost a previously available basis - solely due to the patented caching algorithm (efficient storage of and efficient access to data - so patentable according to Clements' idea).

In the case of PostgreSQL, it went smoothly: the patented algorithm is not faster or better than its non-patented counterpart. And for the software itself, nothing really world-shattering has changed. But this does not have to (and will not) always go so smoothly. In the field of audio processing and video processing, the patented minefields are much more extensive and therefore much more critical for free projects.

Okay, one might still argue that this would not have happened with a GPL license. But with a GPL license, certain forms of use as they already exist in PostgreSQL today (e.g., companies building special databases on PostgreSQL without making these special databases open source) are not possible. You can take a stand on this as you like - ideology aside - the PostgreSQL project has chosen the BSD license as its basis.

Even well-intentioned patent handling in the context of open source software would therefore be problematic. Exactly this is the reason why I am generally against software patents.

Government study warns of blockade by software patents

Government study warns of blockade by software patents:

The study urgently demands, in particular, a strengthening of the interoperability clause in the planned EU legal framework. Otherwise, given the still "generous" practice of the European Patent Office (EPA) in granting protection rights for computer programs, there is a risk of destabilization and partial death of the IT market in Germany and Europe.

But Clement - our super pipe of all - still claims that everything is completely made up and that we should keep the church in the village. What a charade at the expense of our own economic location.

And the German companies against software patents won't bother him much either - probably he hears nothing because his head is still up the ass of the big entrepreneurs. That puts pressure on the ear ...

Response from the BMWA to my fax

On the topic of software patents, I also contacted the BMWA by fax. While the BMJ sent a polite and factual - albeit, in my opinion, somewhat dreamy and detached from reality given Minister Clement's course - response, the BMWA adopts a tone that I find somewhat snippy (annoyed?):

Dear Mr. ..., thank you for your fax dated March 06, 2005, in which you address the adoption of the directive on computer-implemented inventions in the first reading.

I do not share your criticism of the procedure at all.

The purely formal adoption of a text already decided is absolutely usual, indeed mandatory, due to the linguistic diversity in the EU. This is also the view of the Member States, which had or have substantive concerns. This has nothing to do with disregarding democratic rules of the game. The directive is, by the way, by no means adopted yet.

We are certainly in agreement on the objective. I can assure you that the positive economic development of the software industry is close to my heart. However, the often-expressed claims that patent protection for software would be newly introduced or expanded are factually incorrect. Despite all criticism in detail, one should "keep the church in the village".

The German software industry has developed economically well under the existing legal framework with computer program patents. This will not change fundamentally through international harmonization. We are explicitly not taking the path in Europe that is rather progressive and, above all, hostile to small and medium-sized enterprises, as in the USA. The two legal systems differ significantly here.

Yours sincerely on behalf of

Thomas Zuleger

Well. Suspension of democratic decisions and ignoring one's own federal parliament is for Minister Clement just mandatory. Great. Really gives me confidence that we will be well represented by this minister on this issue ...

Microsoft on patent raid - and they simply steal ideas from the IETF Working Group on IPv6, which they were once involved in. Also a patent that, under Clements' interpretation - and possibly even that of the BMJ - of the EU Patent Directive draft would also be enforceable here. And this could cause quite a few problems when using IPv6. Of course, due to prior art, one could challenge such a thing - but someone would first have to do that and be able to afford it.

BMJ's Response to Software Patents

The BMJ has responded today - quite modern via e-mail sent PDF

• to my fax on the topic of software patents on 25.2. answered. Unfortunately, I cannot really feel reassured by the content, especially since the content of the BMJ letter, in my opinion, clearly deviates from the position of the Federal Minister for Economics and Labour, who, for example, also considers procedures for efficient data storage to be patentable - which are pure software patents.

Similarly, there is a conflict with the actual practice of the EU Patent Office: this does indeed grant non-technical patents, as can be seen from the absurd patent on the g eographic separation of data records by vehicle registration numbers, which has just failed in court (but only under current law!). Under a patent grant change as Clement envisages (and which, according to the BMJ, should not actually exist and would not happen) such a patent might be viable.

Of course, there is still no answer to my fax to Clement, which was only at the beginning of this month, it will certainly be April before an answer arrives ...

The horror of software patents

The horror of software patents and Microsoft - take a good look at what we can expect in Europe soon, thanks to idiots like Clemens and Zypries. Yes, exactly this kind of thing would also pass here according to Clemens - data storage methods are one of the examples that are repeatedly brought up from that direction as something worth protecting, even if it's just an algorithm + software. Great. So much for interoperability. But we software patent opponents are all completely uninformed and hysterical and, according to Clement, have no idea.

Clement doesn't understand democracy

There is no other way to interpret the lies about the position of the Ministry of Economic Affairs on the patent directive. There is a clear and unanimous resolution of the Bundestag. But the Ministry of Economic Affairs shits on the opinion of the parliament as well as the experts.

By the way, the given example of "time and space-saving data storage" is exactly what indicates the problems: there have always been problems with patents on compression algorithms that de facto sealed formats for use in open source programs - which is a considerable obstacle to the interoperability that is being discussed everywhere. Microsoft would only have to store the XML formats in a proprietary binary XML format and could thus prevent, by patent, open source software in Europe from reading the documents.

Other - older - examples of exactly this problem are GIF storage and the LZW algorithm. Both have caused massive problems with interoperability and exactly that is what we will also face in Europe with the current directive.

The claim of the Ministry of Economic Affairs that there is nothing to fear is therefore nothing more than a stupid and transparent lie. Ultimately, the federal government is playing into the hands of the industry giants here, and at the expense of the middle class and open source software.

More on this, as usual, at the FFII.

EU Council of Ministers for Compromise on Software Patents

Unbelievable - despite the resistance of various national parliaments and the clear vote of the European Parliament, the software patents directive was pushed through today. And then this corrupt and deceitful bunch wonders why citizens no longer take politics seriously when they trample democracy underfoot.

Disgusting, Mr. Clement, how you ignore and trample the clear request of the Bundestag. Disgusting how you, with your arrogance, think you have to cause more damage to the economic location than the 16 years of Kohl's government managed to achieve. Disgusting how you, with your stupidity, drive another nail into the coffin of the European IT industry - just to crawl up to some multinational corporations that won't create any jobs anyway.

The controversial vehicle registration plate patent has been declared invalid - take a good look at this nonsense, we'll probably have to deal with more of this thanks to proles like Clement. And no, we can't be sure that such patents will be deleted.

No Banana Union Europe

Software Patents: The Signs Point to Renegotiation in the EU Council

Software patents: The signs point to renegotiation in the EU Council

The Commission's plan to push through the directive as quickly as possible, in accordance with the lobbying efforts of major market giants, is likely to be doomed by the Danes' withdrawal from the Council. Because a majority that could vote to maintain the directive as a top priority would no longer exist in light of the expected follow-up of numerous other countries.

I'll believe it when this circus is really renegotiated.

Software patents: EU Commission officially rejects directive restart and our government remains inactive. It would be so simple: the state governments whose parliaments have issued the recommendation that the directive must not pass in this form, would only have to do what their damn duty is: to follow the wish of their national parliament. Instead, everyone plays the yes-man and hides or lies to themselves a perfect world, while EU democracy is trampled on. And all this for the benefit of multinational corporations and at the expense of the European middle class ...

A Call to Action in OASIS

A Call to Action in OASIS is an open letter from a whole range of Open Source big names against the latest OASIS framework conditions. OASIS deals with the standardization of data formats and web services, and in the latest framework conditions, standards should also allow those based on patented techniques - and thus ultimately give companies the means to exclude Open Source programs with these standards. In principle, a rehash of the same stupid idea from the W3C - which then withdrew this idea in response to the protests.

Microsoft will have invented the inequality command for Basic - and that over a month before April 1st ...

Microsoft erhält Patent auf Koordinaten in URLs - was für ein hochgradiger Schwachsinn. Wieder mal ein Beweis dafür, das Patente auf Algorithmen einfach nur Moppelkotze sind und bestenfalls der Geldabzocke dienen können, aber sicherlich nicht der von den Verteidigern immer wieder gerne zitierten Innovationslust.

Softwarepatentrichtlinie: EU-Parlament verlangt Neustart des Verfahrens - ob das jetzt die Kommission sonderlich beeindrucken wird? Das letzte Mal haben sie die Meinung des Parlamentes ja auch einfach ignoriert.

Rechtsausschuss des Bundestags stimmt gegen Softwarepatente

Rechtsausschuss des Bundestags stimmt gegen Softwarepatente - ob jetzt in der Regierung endlich jemand aufwacht? Oder wird auch die Meinung des Bundestages - wie schon vorher die Meinung des EU-Parlamentes - mit Füssen getreten?

Google bekommt Patent auf Suchbegriffhervorhebung

Google bekommt Patent auf Suchbegriffhervorhebung - und damit verstösst meine Website gegen genau dieses Patent. Dank des Search-Highlight-Plugins für WordPress (ist im Standardumfang mit drin) werden bei mir nämlich Suchbegriffe farblich gekennzeichnet, wenn man von einer Suchmaschine auf meine Seiten kommt. Tja, verklag mich doch, Google ...

Patente an sich sind schon problematisch genug, aber solche Banalpatente sind einfach nur Moppelkotze.

Microsoft attempts to patent object persistence

Toll - simple und banale Objektserialisierung. Sowas gibts schon seit Jahren, quatsch seit Jahrzehnten. Und Microsoft will das patentieren ...

Bei kasia in a nutshell gibts den Originalartikel.