summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/scrap1_24.html
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/scrap1_24.html')
-rw-r--r--talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/scrap1_24.html289
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 289 deletions
diff --git a/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/scrap1_24.html b/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/scrap1_24.html
deleted file mode 100644
index 8d27662..0000000
--- a/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/scrap1_24.html
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,289 +0,0 @@
-<!-- This is the second edition of Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman.
-
-Free Software Foundation
-
-51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
-
-Boston, MA 02110-1335
-Copyright C 2002, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
-Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire book are permitted
-worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice is
-preserved. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations
-of this book from the original English into another language provided
-the translation has been approved by the Free Software Foundation and
-the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all
-copies.
-
-ISBN 978-0-9831592-0-9
-Cover design by Rob Myers.
-
-Cover photograph by Peter Hinely.
- -->
-
-
- <a name="Software-Patents-and-Literary-Patents">
- </a>
- <h1 class="chapter">
- 24. Software Patents and Literary Patents
- </h1>
- <a name="index-patents_002c-analogy-between-literary-and-software">
- </a>
- <a name="index-Hugo_002c-Victor">
- </a>
- <a name="index-patents_002c-proposed-European-Union-software-patents-directive-1">
- </a>
- <a name="index-European-Union_002c-proposed-European-Union-software-patents-directive-1">
- </a>
- <p>
- When politicians consider the question of software patents, they are
-usually voting blind; not being programmers, they don’t understand
-what software patents really do. They often think patents are similar
-to copyright law (“except for some details”)—which
-is not the case. For instance, when I publicly asked
- <a name="index-Devedjian_002c-Minister-Patrick">
- </a>
- Patrick
-Devedjian, then Minister for Industry in
- <a name="index-France-1">
- </a>
- France, how France would vote
-on the issue of software patents, Devedjian responded with an
-impassioned defense of copyright law, praising Victor Hugo for his
-role in the adoption of copyright. (The misleading
-term “intellectual property” promotes this confusion—one of the reasons it
-should never be used.)
- </p>
- <p>
- Those who imagine effects like those of copyright law cannot grasp the
-disastrous effects of software patents. We can use Victor Hugo as an
-example to illustrate the difference.
- </p>
- <p>
- A novel and a modern complex program have certain points in common:
-each one is large, and implements many ideas in combination. So let’s
-follow the analogy, and suppose that patent law had been applied to
-novels in the 1800s; suppose that states such as France had permitted
-the patenting of literary ideas. How would this have affected Victor
-Hugo’s writing? How would the effects of literary patents compare
-with the effects of literary copyright?
- </p>
- <a name="index-Les-Miserables_002c-Victor-Hugo">
- </a>
- <p>
- Consider Victor Hugo’s novel
- <cite>
- Les Misérables.
- </cite>
- Since he
-wrote it, the copyright belonged only to him. He
-did not have to fear that some stranger could sue him for copyright
-infringement and win. That was impossible, because copyright covers
-only the details of a work of authorship, not the ideas embodied in
-them, and it only restricts copying. Hugo had not copied
- <cite>
- Les
-Misérables,
- </cite>
- so he was not in danger from copyright.
- </p>
- <p>
- Patents work differently. Patents cover ideas; each patent is a
-monopoly on practicing some idea, which is described in the patent
-itself. Here’s one example of a hypothetical literary patent:
- </p>
- <ul>
- <li>
- Claim 1: a communication process that represents in the mind of a reader the concept of a character who has been in jail for a long time and becomes bitter towards society and humankind.
- </li>
- <li>
- Claim 2: a communication process according to claim 1, wherein said character subsequently finds moral redemption through the kindness of another.
- </li>
- <li>
- Claim 3: a communication process according to claims 1 and 2, wherein said character changes his name during the story.
- </li>
- </ul>
- <a name="index-Valjean_002c-literary-character-Jean-_0028see-also-Les-Miserables_0029">
- </a>
- <p>
- If such a patent had existed in 1862 when
- <cite>
- Les Misérables
- </cite>
- was
-published, the novel would have conflicted with all three claims,
-since all these things happened to Jean Valjean in the novel. Victor
-Hugo could have been sued, and if sued, he would have lost. The novel
-could have been prohibited—in effect, censored—by the
-patent holder.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now consider this hypothetical literary patent:
- </p>
- <ul>
- <li>
- Claim 1: a communication process that represents in the mind of a reader the concept of a character who has been in jail for a long time and subsequently changes his name.
- </li>
- </ul>
- <p>
- <cite>
- Les Misérables
- </cite>
- would have been prohibited by that patent too,
-because this description too fits the life story of Jean Valjean. And
-here’s another hypothetical patent:
- </p>
- <ul>
- <li>
- Claim 1: a communication process that represents in the mind of a reader the concept of a character who finds moral redemption and then changes his name.
- </li>
- </ul>
- <p>
- Jean Valjean would have been forbidden by this patent too.
- </p>
- <p>
- All three patents would cover, and prohibit, the life story of this one
-character. They overlap, but they do not precisely duplicate each other,
-so they could all be valid simultaneously; all three patent holders
-could have sued Victor Hugo. Any one of them could have prohibited
-publication of
- <cite>
- Les Misérables.
- </cite>
- </p>
- <p>
- This patent also could have been violated:
- </p>
- <ul>
- <li>
- Claim 1: a communication process that presents a character whose given name matches the last syllable of his family name.
- </li>
- </ul>
- <p>
- through the name “Jean Valjean,” but at least this patent
-would have been easy to avoid.
- </p>
- <p>
- You might think that these ideas are so simple that no patent office
-would have issued them. We programmers are often amazed by the
-simplicity of the ideas that real software patents cover—for
-instance, the
- <a name="index-European-Patent-Office">
- </a>
- European Patent Office has issued a patent on the
-progress bar, and a patent on accepting payment via credit cards.
-These patents would be laughable if they were not so dangerous.
- </p>
- <p>
- Other aspects of
- <cite>
- Les Misérables
- </cite>
- could also have
-run afoul of
-patents. For instance, there could have been a patent on a
-fictionalized portrayal of the Battle of Waterloo, or a patent on
-using Parisian slang in fiction. Two more lawsuits. In fact, there
-is no limit to the number of different patents that might have been
-applicable for suing the author of a work such as
- <cite>
- Les
-Misérables.
- </cite>
- All the patent holders would say they deserved a
-reward for the literary progress that their patented ideas represent,
-but these obstacles would not promote progress in literature, they
-would only obstruct it.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, a very broad patent could have made all these issues
-irrelevant. Imagine a patent with broad claims like these:
- </p>
- <ul>
- <li>
- A communication process structured with narration that continues
-through many pages.
- </li>
- <li>
- A narration structure sometimes resembling a fugue or
-improvisation.
- </li>
- <li>
- Intrigue articulated around the confrontation of specific
-characters, each in turn setting traps for the others.
- </li>
- <li>
- Narration that presents many layers of society.
- </li>
- <li>
- Narration that shows the wheels of hidden conspiracy.
- </li>
- </ul>
- <p>
- Who would the patent holders have been? They could have been
-other novelists, perhaps Dumas or Balzac, who had written such
-novels—but not necessarily. It isn’t required to write a
-program to patent a software idea, so if our hypothetical literary
-patents follow the real patent system, these patent holders would not
-have had to write novels, or stories, or anything—except patent
-applications. Patent parasite companies, businesses that produce
-nothing except threats and lawsuits, are booming nowadays.
- </p>
- <p>
- Given these broad patents, Victor Hugo would not have reached
-the point of asking what patents might get him sued for using the
-character of Jean Valjean, because he could not even have considered
-writing a novel of this kind.
- <a name="index-Valjean_002c-literary-character-Jean-_0028see-also-Les-Miserables_0029-1">
- </a>
- <a name="index-Les-Miserables_002c-Victor-Hugo-1">
- </a>
- <a name="index-Hugo_002c-Victor-1">
- </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- This analogy can help nonprogrammers see what software patents
-do. Software patents cover features, such as defining abbreviations in
-a word processor, or natural order recalculation in a spreadsheet.
-Patents cover algorithms that programs need to use. Patents cover
-aspects of file formats, such as Microsoft’s
- <a name="index-Microsoft_002c-OOXML-format-_0028see-also-patents_0029">
- </a>
- OOXML format.
- <a name="index-MPEG_002d2">
- </a>
- MPEG 2
-video format is covered by 39 different US patents.
- </p>
- <p>
- Just as one novel could run afoul of many different literary patents at
-once, one program can be prohibited by many different patents at once.
-It is so much work to identify all the patents that appear to apply
-to a large program that only one such study has been done. A 2004 study of
-Linux, the
- <a name="index-kernel_002c-Linux-2">
- </a>
- <a name="index-Linux-kernel-2">
- </a>
- kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system, found 283
-different US software patents that seemed to cover it. That is to
-say, each of these 283 different patents forbids some computational
-process found somewhere in the thousands of pages of source code of
-Linux. At the time, Linux was around 1 percent of the whole
-GNU/Linux system. How many patents might there be that a distributor
-of the whole system could be sued under?
- </p>
- <a name="index-call-to-action_002c-do-not-authorize-software-patents">
- </a>
- <p>
- The way to prevent software patents from bollixing software
-development is simple: don’t authorize them. This ought to be easy,
-since most patent laws have provisions against software patents. They
-typically say that “software per se” cannot be patented.
-But patent offices around the world are trying to twist the words and
-issuing patents on the ideas implemented in programs. Unless this is
-blocked, the result will be to put all software developers in danger.
- <a name="index-patents_002c-analogy-between-literary-and-software-1">
- </a>
- </p>
- <hr size="2"/>
-