[ILUG] Sw Patents, Political Party Positions (maybe OT)

[kevin lyda]

On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 07:03:41PM +0100, Paul O'Malley wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 10:27, kevin lyda wrote:
> > On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 10:20:03AM +0100, Paul O'Malley wrote:
> > > At the risk of getting a lot of backs up, political support for an
> > > economic model those that are in politics _think_ they understand.
> > i'm afraid my parser core dumped somewhere in this sentence.  please
> > correct and resubmit your job.
> $At the risk of getting a lot of backs up, 
> 'obvious - it is my opinion that the rest of this comment might annoy
> some people'
> $political support for an economic model those that are in politics
> 'thought it was obvious ;) - those that politically support an ecomomic
> model that supports software patents'
> #note to self a comma would have been useful here
> $_think_ they understand
> 'consider patents to be the best way for the software market to work,
> however. considering that in the last diety knows how many years we have
> been patent free with regard to software'
> ./pass_to_kevin_to_parse

wow.  that's actually harder to understand then the first one.  so you're
attempting to say something like this:

    some politicians think that patents are required for the software
    industry to work; or at least patents are required for industry
    to work efficiently or fairly or both.  they have been led to that
    conclusion by lobbyists from software firms that believe in patents.

    in order to change their minds, those of us in the free software
    community will need to present lucid and rational arguments in terms
    that politicians will understand.

maybe that's what you meant.  maybe not.  at the risk of arguing with a
position you DON'T have, i'm curious why you chose my message to reply
to below:

On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 10:20:03AM +0100, Paul O'Malley wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 10:02, kevin lyda wrote:
> > On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 07:49:06AM +0100, Frank Murphy wrote:
> 
> > it's pedantic, but ip discussions in the media are full of inaccuracies.
> > we should take pains to be as careful as we can with ip terms since it
> > appears that the last gasp for closed source companies is through ip
> > law.
> At the risk of getting a lot of backs up, political support for an
> economic model those that are in politics _think_ they understand.
> 
> Educate, and not by shouting, but explaining it in pounds, shillings and
> pence. The measure can still be killed in August, but it will take more
> work.

ok, the second paragraph is readable.  but i'm not certain how it
relates to what i had written.  my point was merely that in ip
discussions we should be very attentive to the terms we use.

ip law consists of lots of things.  patents, trademarks, trade secrets
and copyrights to name just a few.  in discussing crimminal law, you'd
look rather foolish confusing rape and murder.  most people are more
familiar with criminal law then ip law - you'll note the lack of a "law
and order: intellectual property crimes unit" tv show - so that example
may seem extreme.  however many politicians are more familiar with law
then the average schmoe due to their role in drafting or enforcing laws.

yes, an economic argument is a powerful one.  however it is still
important to use the correct terms.  free software still requires
intellectual property law - nearly all free software licenses depend
on copyright.  linux distro companies also depend on trademark law for
branding their products - and stopping others from copying their brand.

of course there are lots of economic arguments.  not to sound marxist,
but most things boil down to economics on some level.

for instance iirc ireland doesn't spend as much on r&d per capita as most
other industrialised countries.  and even if we did, our spending would
be dwarfed by the uk - nevermind the us, india or china.  patents are
a state-enforced monopoly on an invention.  this puts irish industry
at a disadvantage.  the current goverment's position on patents is a
bit counter-intuitive unless it is willing to make huge investments in
indigenous software companies.  and even then it is doubtful we'd come
out ahead.

there might be some idea that the legal profession would benefit from
software patents.  it might, but i doubt it would be the irish legal
profession.  us legal firms have far more understanding of software
patents, and the vast majority of software patents are in america.
i don't know where the eu patent office is - if there is such a thing
- but i bet it isn't in ireland.  and i'd guess that lawyers in that
country would be best equipped to handle the eu side of software patents.
the majority of legal fees for the few software patents we would get in
ireland would likely go to law firms outside of ireland.

as for defending against patent lawsuits, the irish legal profession
might come out ahead there - but on the backs of irish industry.
we're behind on patents.  i doubt many irish software firms are not
violating at least one patent.  if one looked into the businesses that,
say, an post and easons are involved in are they violating a software
patent?  who knows?

the vast majority of software is developed internally, or by small firms
developing code for a few companies.  in many of those scenarios (if
software patents were legal), patents are being violated.  that means
that those companies would need to pay royalties on those patents -
so there would be a knockon effect.  let's say there's a patent on
some aspect of an inventory system - something that nearly all modern
inventory systems use - that means that pretty much every retail store
in the country would face increase fees on their inventory system.
in turn, that means higher fees for the irish consumer.

there are other arguments though.

for instance what about fairness?  in popular mythology, patents are the
avenue to riches for the little guy.  the lone inventor.  to that end
would the irish gov't be willing to change irish employment law so that
your employer doesn't automatically own the rights to the inventions you
create - even those outside of work?  why not?

> It was interesting to hear Pat Cox talking about the council yesterday
> on the radio, if there is anyone here who knows which show it was on,
> (RTE1) I would like to hear it again.

go to www.rte.ie - they have listings of previous shows and the times
they were on.  sometimes they mention guests.  only goes back about a
week though.

kevin

-- 
kevin at ie.suberic.net  ~  "you're either with us or against us." --dubya
iraq: vietnam again?  ~  in that simplistic world-view progressives and
a new lbj selected -  ~  liberals are "us" while bush and bin laden are
"looney bush junior"  ~  "against us."
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