Microsoft-watch have an interesting article about Microsoft’s new push for patent reform in the US. This is in a way to be expected. Although Microsoft are one of the biggest patent holders, they are also one of the biggest targets for patent infringement lawsuits, and so they want to change the rules. They are totally correct, the rules and implementation are both broken, and Microsoft’s suggestions are for the most part solid, but I can’t help but find their action suspect and wonder if they are not just trying to change the system to limit action against them, while leaving them open to use their own patents to carry on as usual. This is however a double bladed sword as I suspect that if Microsoft gets their reforms, a good many of their own patents will be invalid along with the rest.

The whole reason the software patent system is silly and broken is simple. If the giants who created TCP/IP (the underlying protocol running the Internet), HTML and the WWW, (Web pages), E-mail and the GUI (Graphical User Interface) had decided to patent and license their ideas, what would Microsoft, Linux, IBM and co have had to build from? I’d guess IBM would be the only player on the market now as Microsoft and most others were at that time, fairly small companies and couldn’t develop applications which had big patent licensing costs. Microsoft and everyone else freely use all the real innovation underpinning the Internet for free, but every time they come up some an idea, no matter how simple, trivial or obvious, they seem to feel the need to patent it immediately and sell licences. It is very sad that in the world today, money trumps everything and very few seem to do anything beneficial for IT without expecting fistfuls of cash in return. Imagine if the guys that created the Internet had had the same philosophy.

At the current rate, in the coming years it will become so expensive to licence all the patents necessary to write a basic application, that the application will have to be priced so high that the developers won’t be able to sell it. Only truly innovative inventions should be patentable, just taking a real world scenario and getting a patent for applying that real world scenario to the Internet does not qualify for a patent. That is part of what is wrong with the system and even though Microsoft is getting stung by lawsuits and is asking for changes, they are as big an offender with regards to stupid patent applications as any.

The European Union has recently rejected proposed patent legislation. Unfortunately, it may now pass when read in Parliment today, according to Reuters.uk. That article reports that Polish representatives in the EU, who previously objected to the proposed bill and thus energized others to voice opposition, is expected to remain silent. Passage of the EU patent legislation would be considered a win for large companies that try to patent all sorts of trivial things, acording to some pundits. Contrary it would be somewhat of a blow to open source as some things otherwise available to them may be foreclosed from use due to patents.

Sometimes something happens that makes me think that perhaps there needs to be some reworking on the democratic process. Take for example the communications between government and big business. Should companies with millions of dollars be allowed to have unrecorded meetings with the heads of government? Take the recent Denmark story where it was said Microsoft threatened to move their software division out of the country if the software patent directive wasn’t adopted. Microsoft denied the report but apparently admitted that both items were in the discussion. If the discussion was recorded on tape for public record, we’d all be able to decide for ourselves if it was a threat or not.
The latest news is that approximately a week after the EC denied the request to restart the patent directive discussion even though they no longer had a majority in favour of it, the EC Council presidency has denied a request from Poland, Denmark, Portugal and others (not specified) who asked for a B item (discussion point) instead of just voting though an A item. ” The Luxembourg presidency claimed this was not possible due to procedural reasons” and as a result the software patent directive was voted though without further discussion.

Once this goes though, the EU courts will likely fill up with stupid software cases like the SCO/IBM saga where anyone that see’s the potential for money will sue on the off chance for a payout. Worse, big companies can use their big budgets to haul little companies into court and drive them out of business. There is the possibility that this directive will get voted down at it’s second reading to the EU parliament, but it’s apparently much harder to change something at second reading then it was the first time around. The problem is that the EC don’t realise that this will cost them far more money in the long run then any big software companies could invest in their countries. Look at the number of software patent cases going on in the US system if you’re looking for proof. Read the details of the EC story at the FFII.

In what appears to be an amazingly anti-democratic sign of the problems faced by the EU, the European Commission has declined the European Parliament’s request to restart the legislative process on the “Software patent directive”. The directive no longer has a majority backing in the EU, but it has been said that other forces have been pushing to get the patent directive into place. Twice now certain parties tried to slip the approval process into EU Fisheries meetings, and twice Poland stopped them. It seems that the powers that be are not going to allow democracy to get in the way of big business. Read this rather more descriptive breakdown of the situation.

Last November a Microsoft employee issued a patent application on a function called “IsNot” the purpose of which is to check if two variables point to the same memory location. (In other words, they test if the two variables are in fact different names for the same variable). Every programming language has used such checks in the past and it is an extremely obvious function and should not therefore be granted as a “unique” innovation. However they are going to try anyway apparently.

Real Software have a product they call RealBasic that allows programmers to easily create programs that will work on Windows, Mac and Linux from the same code base, and Real are said to be worried that Microsoft is going to use it’s IsNot patent (assuming it is granted) to try and litigate RealBasic out of existence. As Richard Tallent, a software developer and project scientist at ERM Group Inc said:

The only reason a company would want to lay claim to such a patent would be to sue anybody who tries to implement that idea.

Patents are supposed to allow true innovators the opportunity to take advantage of their invention, not as a tool to allow big companies to block competitors from following obvious trends. This is why it is so important that the EU not fall into the software patent trap that the US is currently buried in. Microsoft has revealed no intention of having their Visual Studio tools updated to create Linux programs, and RealBasic already does this. You can see why Microsoft might be worried that programmers might like the idea of write once for all platforms rather then Microsoft’s apparent “Write once just for Windows and forget any other operating systems” ideology.
Read more at Eweek.

Bill Gates is apparently getting alittle upset that the European Union are not falling into line by adopting the same software patent laws that have so filled the US court system with stupid cases.

To make his intention clear, big Bill has threatened to move his Denmark software unit to the US unless the EU agree’s to software patents.

IT magnate Bill Gates plans to move Microsoft’s Denmark-based Navision business software unit to the United States if the European Union blocks his attempts to secure Microsoft’s intellectual property rights in Europe.

Well, now it begins to become clear why the unpopular directive keeps getting put back on the table even though it has been shot down several times now. There is money behind the push folks, and now you see where some of it is coming from. What Microsoft probably doesn’t understand though, is that the EU isn’t likely to drop their pants for a US company, because competing with the US was one of the reasons for starting the EU in the first place. Many big software companies already have registered software patents in the EU, and anything that changes the rules in a way that makes those patents less valid is not something the huge software companies want to accept as it removes one of their tools for crushing smaller opposition. (like Open Source for example).

Read the full story here or here.
INSERT: Microsoft have denied that they are in any way blackmailing Denmark.

A company by the name of “DE Technologies” is in the middle of suing Dell because they offer an international e-commerce platform by which they offer their products, and that international shopping cart system adds up all the various changes, taxes and shipping, and tells the shopper in their own currency, what they will owe should they choose to purchase the product in question. Apparently the idea of telling people what they will have to pay for something in total before purchase is some secret technology that required a patent.

Apparently, only DE Technologies are smart enough to work out that a person would want to know the total price before committing to a purchase if it’s international, and because it incorporates currency conversion and stuff. (another “gee, how did they think of that?” aspect.) DE are alleging that Dell is in violation of their patent and owes them lots of cash. This is what happens when you have patent officers that have no idea about the technology they are in charge of, making the decisions. They think nearly everything is “revolutionary” and worthy of a patent, when to someone in the business, it’s a totally obvious process. I wrote a shopping cart years ago for a client, and it was an Australian shopping cart designed to take our new (back then) GST into account, the last thing it did before sending people off to pay, was display and email a pre payment tax invoice to Australian customers. Apparently the process wasn’t that “special” if someone like me could infringe on it just by doing what was obvious.

If you live in Europe, you are running out of time to tell your local representative that you are terrified that the same patent rubbish going on in the US is about to be imported into the EU. Check out http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ if you want to help make a stand against this madness. For more on the DE/Dell story, see here.