-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Patents] eWeek editorial
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 21:05:23 +0100
From: James Heald <j.heald(a)ucl.ac.uk>
Reply-To: j.heald(a)ucl.ac.uk
To: patents(a)aful.org
The editorial in eWeek this week is fairly strongly anti-swpat, quoting
Gerald Cohen, veteran head of I-Builders in New York:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1122081,00.asp
Opinion
June 9, 2003
Patent Progress
There's a reason for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It was created to
foster invention by rewarding inventors for their time and trouble by
granting temporary monopoly protection for the fruits of their labor. The
net result is a benefit to society: Rewarding inventors tends to bring about
more invention and economic productivity.
Because patent applications mandate disclosure, the patent process has
social advantages over trade-secret alternatives. However, if a given law or
enforcement pattern of a lawincluding patent lawresults in harm to
society, then it's time to change the laws. Patents on software carry the
potential of harm to the software industry and thereby to the economy.
Equally problematic are the so-called method patents, or patents on
application behavior, such as Amazon's famousor infamousone-click patent.
How dangerous are software patents? Information Builders President and CEO
Gerald Cohen warned eWEEK editors that the presence of patents is a scourge
to the industry. Cohen has seen much innovation in a patent-free climate.
Now he and other software leaders are being threatened with lawsuits.
Software companies need to create software, which, after all, often has a
short shelf life. They do not need to spend precious resources hiring
expensive attorneys. Copyright protection should be enough. A copyright
protects original expression; its existence encourages software developers
to seek new ways of presenting function to users and of streamlining
integration behind the scenes.
If patents for software are generally not a good idea, patents are out of
bounds when it comes to standard protocols, such as those that underpin the
World Wide Web. Keeping the Web patent-free prevents it from becoming a
hunting ground for those seeking royalties on some of the most widely used
software.
There are encouraging developments, however. The World Wide Web Consortium's
forthright stand on the issue sets an excellent example. The W3C's intent
has been known for a while, but only last month did the organization issue a
formal policy statement banning patented technologies from its standards.
In addition, some unjustified patents have been thrown out. For example,
British Telecom claimed every organization using Web hyperlinks would need
to license a patent the U.S. PTO issued it in 1989. Last year, it lost its
test lawsuit against Prodigy Communications when U.S. District Judge Colleen
McMahon ruled that the patent didn't apply to hyperlinks. In addition, three
patents covering client/server computing as a whole were ruled invalid by
the courts in mid-2002 because the technology described was in public use
before the patent application was filed.
Thus, there are signs that a rational approach to software patents is
gaining momentum. Still, the PTO needs to do more to raise the bar for
software patents. If they are to be granted, software patents ought to be
extremely rare indeed.
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* APOLOGIES FOR MULTIPLE POSTINGS *
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Announcing:
The Joint AGNULA-PlanetCCRMA
BYOL-0.1 (Bring Your Own Laptop) Workshop 2003
July 3 to July 6, Prato (Florence) Italy:
Tempo Reale Ricerca, the Department of Research of the Centro Tempo
Reale, is offering the first Bring Your Own Laptop workshop, that will
be held in Prato (Florence) in collaboration with The Center for Computer
Research in Music & Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University and the
Prato Linux User Group (PLUG).
The workshop will end on July 6 with a concert in collaboration with:
CCRMA, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford
University;
NYU, New York University;
DIST, Universita' di Genova
The workshop will focus on Free Software in Computer Music:viability
and usability of currently available GNU/Linux audio software.
The most recent version of PLANET CCRMA and AGNULA project, DeMuDi &
RehMuDI, will be presented during the BYOL.
The participation to the workshop is free. A limited number of
participants will be accepted, due to the non infinite capacity of the
hall (50 participants maximum at this moment), and therefore an online
registration is required.
The workshop includes morning presentations and laboratory in the
afternoon, using your own laptop.
Special guests are invited to give presentation.
Abramo Bagnara: Alsa project Team
Kjetil Falkenberg Hansen: Kungl Tekniska Högskolan (KTH), Music Acoustics
Group,Stockholm
Roger Dannenberg: Carnegie Mellon University
François Dechelle, Patrice Tisserand: IRCAM (Institut de Recherche
et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), Paris
Guenter Geiger: Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Nicola Bernardini, Dave Phillips e Marco Trevisani:
Tempo Reale Ricerca
Ron Kuivila: Wesleyan University
Nguyen Ngoc Can: Red Hat / RehMuDi AGNULA
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano: Planet CCRMA, Stanford University
You can find the complete list of guests soon in the BYOL web page:
http://byol.agnula.org
For further information please contact us at:
marco(a)centrotemporeale.it
or subscribe the mailing list
byol(a)agnula.org
for web subscription:
http://lists.agnula.org/mailman/listinfo/byol
Check our web page for more detailed information and updated news:
http://byol.agnula.org
This Workshop is part of the dissemination plan of the AGNULA project
(IST-2001-34879), whose partners are:
TRR, Tempo Reale Ricerca
IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), Paris
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Music Technology Group, Barcelona
Kungl Tekniska Högskolan (KTH), Music Acoustics Group, Stockholm
Free Software Foundation Europe
Red Hat France
--
The AGNULA Project (IST-34879)
http://www.agnula.org
info(a)agnula.org
Neither MS-Word nor MS-PowerPoint attachments please.
Just read the LWN article about Ximians Desktop2
http://lwn.net/Articles/34940/
You can learn that they install proprietary software like
a pdf and a flash plug-in with their redcarpet service.
Most disturbing is that they changed the standard save format
for Openoffice to be a propietory format,
not helping http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html at all.
This is even bad for the companies that desktop is targetted at
and we should get the word out to this companies
that using proprietary data format is really dangerous for them.
Hi,
In Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is
stated
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material
interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production
of which he is the author.
http://reactor-core.org/universal-human-rights.html
How does this affect the FSF's viewpoint that writing proprietary
software is immoral?
Wouter Vanden Hove
http://www.opencursus.behttp://www.open-education.org
Obelix./.MobiliX: new details about the appeal to the highest German civil court
On May 27th 2003 Prof. Dr. Achim Kraemer has send a detailed request to
permit an appeal to the highest German civil court the
Bundesgerichtshof - BGH.
The new German civil law allows only a very few cases for an appeal to
the BGH. There must for example general public interests strongly be
concerned. In his long and detailed argumentation Prof. Dr. Kraemer
writes: "The commercial usage of domain names leads already at the time
of their registration to preventive reactions by holders of older
trademarks, which claim their trademarks as violated. Particular risks
exist for so-called word-trademarks, which contain parts of the common
language, if they are combined with suffixes or prefixes used in certain
groups. If trademarks are protected to much excessive, as the appeal
court has done in our opinion, some very famous but fancy names may occupy
a wide range of the language and it well become impossible for others to
create new word-trademarks." A decision of the BGH to permit the appeal is
expected at the end of 2003. A final verdict will probably not be
available until 2005.
In autumn 2001 Les Edition Albert René, the owner of the trademark Obelix
has charged Werner Heuser. He is the owner of the wellknown open source
project MobiliX ( now TuxMobil http://tuxmobil.org ) . This project provides a
plenty of information about UniX operating systems like Linux, BSD and
Solaris on mobile computers. Therefore he has choosen a name, which
expresses this by a combination of the words "Mobile" and "iX". According
to the plaintiff he has choosen a word very similar to their trademark
Obelix, because he wants to take advantage of their famous name.
A detailed documentation of the case, containing information
about other projects under siege and the written statements of the
lawyers JBB http://jbb.de , is available online
http://tuxmobil.org/mobilix_asterix.html
At the 4th Libre Software Meeting Metz (France) July 2003 Werner Heuser
will give a talk about the case
http://www.libresoftwaremeeting.org
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