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The Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT") announced today that it has filed a formal request with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to review a patent relating to photomosaics, which are large pictures made by using many smaller pictures. The patentee, Mr. Robert Silvers, has been aggressively asserting the patent against many individuals, small businesses, and even against an important open source software program (GIMP).
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by:  zoobab 1229800347|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Back in October, we were disappointed by a UK court ruling that effectively told the UK's Patent Office that it had to stop rejecting software patents outright, and instead consider software patentable if it met certain criteria. Given the widespread evidence that software patents have done plenty of harm, and almost nothing to help the software industry, this is generally disappointing.
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by: zoobab 1229798809|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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The patent spectres haunting innovation in ICT are also at work in the standards arena / The discussion around IPR, and particularly patents, in the EU is a vibrant one. My own view is that software patents are A Bad Thing but if we are to have them then standardisation could have a particular role to play in the standardisation landscape. Ideally, an International Standard should provide a guarantee of freedom from IPR encumbrance / This idea (first raised on this blog by André Rebentisch) is that a certain class of International Standards could provide a “safe haven” for implementers, who should feel secured against legal action for any implementations that arise directly from the use of that standard.
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by: zoobab 1229798487|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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The U.S. National Security Agency has patented a technique for figuring out whether someone is tampering with network communication. The NSA's software does this by measuring the amount of time the network takes to send different types of data from one computer to another and raising a red flag if something takes too long, according to the patent filing.
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by: zoobab 1229779612|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Myth 9: "The software patent dilemma is addressed energetically by the EPO now that its Enlarged Board of Appeal has been invoked in order to shed its light on the limits of software patentability." Reality: The EPO President indeed recently has referred some questions about this issue to the EPO Enlarged Board of Appeal. However, these questions are limited to legal details. The basic premises of the present rules are not questions, and those have actually led to so much legal uncertainty, and so many questions of the appropriateness of software patents.
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by: zoobab 1229772619|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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While some argue that the definition is an issue for IPR licencing agreements known as FRAND or RAND1 where companies agree to license their intellectual property rights for a reasonable fee so that others can use it, others state that this approach is open to abuse as "reasonable fee" is unclear and incompatible with the implementation of the standard under most of the existing open source software licenses. While some argue that favouring standards with royalty free IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) prevents companies from recuperating their investments and therefore will stop innovation, others insist that, in the long-run, open (Royalty Free) standards will bring more competition and innovation.
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by: zoobab 1229704006|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Reaffirms EIF v1.0's narrow definition of "open standards". Under this definition, among other things to qualify as "open" any IP in the standard must be made irrevocably available on a royalty free basis and there must be no constraints on re-use of the standard. The draft EIF v2.0 expressly provides that to qualify as open a standard must be capable of being implemented by both proprietary software and OSS solutions, but assumes that OSS solutions are incompatible with IP rights in standards.
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by: zoobab 1229703562|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Finally, the attempt to redefine the meaning of "open standards" in EIF 1.0 has only created difficulties in collaboration between relevant stakeholders, and it persists here. Accepted definitions, such as the one used by the Global Standards Collaboration5, do not need to be revised in this context, and a new definition of "open standards" is not needed here.
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by: zoobab 1229702691|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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As other stakeholders have noted including EICTA, whose submission to the Commission is attached to this letter most developers of open standards have intellectual property policies that could fail to satisfy the above criteria. The major standards bodies have policies that permit IPR holders to license any patents essential to the standard under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") terms that would not satisfy the requirements of the EIF. Leading standards developed by bodies generally recognised as open standards developers such as OASIS, W3C, IETF, IEEE, ETSI, ISO, IEC and ITU would not in fact be "open" under the EIF criteria.
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by: zoobab 1229702310|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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The Draft EIF v2 proposed to redefine "open standards" in a way that devalues intellectual property in standards and discourages intellectual property creators from introducing their innovative technology. The EIF v2 have adopted a new definition of "open standards, it should be a definition with European Commission standardisation policy and consistent with ISO. a. Standards policies respect the balance of interests of intellectual property creators and users to encourage investment in and dissemination of innovative technology. b. RAND-based standards are available to all users, including vendors relying on the open source software business model. The EIF v2 revaluating "open standards" assumes that interoperability cannot be based on RAND-based standards.
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by: zoobab 1229702068|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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The proposed exclusion of non-royalty free standards will slow down innovation because R&D investments can no longer be earned back. This is bad for society consumers and public authorities alike and for the economy at large. It will hurt our region hardest as proximity to (public authority) customers is an advantage. It should not be forgotten that if royalty-free standards are imposed, European investors in R&D will have to give royalty-free licenses to non-European competitors, which is difficult to reconcile with the EU's Lisbon objectives.
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by: zoobab 1229700898|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Open Standards - Red Hat strongly believes that fostering open standards and encouraging innovation decreases dependence on a single suite of applications and on a single vendor. Therefore, Red Hat supports the adoption and promotion of open standards that are available free from any licensing, royalty payments, or other restrictions, and that are implementable by multiple vendors on multiple platforms. Ideally, such standards are developed through a transparent and vendor-neutral process. Red Hat is very pleased that the EIF v2.0 adopts these same principles regarding open standards. The company also commends the IDABC for resisting pressure to broaden its definition of "open" standards to include standards that contain intellectual property for which a developer must pay a royalty. Such standards, which generally benefit only one proprietary vendor, do not meet the generally accepted definition of "openness" and should not be promulgated as such.
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by: zoobab 1229700655|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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OFE believes that the continuing debate on specific issues of IPR, e.g. patent applicability, within the specific context of interoperability will never be fully resolved until a legislative stance is taken. OFE therefore believes that the Commission should be working on the formulation of a formal Interoperability Directive.
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by: zoobab 1229700418|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Can I patent software running on a general purpose computer? The Bilski court focused on data-processing methods, and did not address the patentability of hardware or software per se. A key question for the future is how the phrase “tied to a particular machine” will be applied to software patents. If interpreted narrowly — i.e., requiring the use of special-purpose computing hardware to receive a patent — many, if not most, business method and software patents may not survive. If it is read less restrictively, the status quo may prevail. In either case, patents for inventions implemented as software should include some structural and functional components in the patent application and the claims. Claims covering human activity are now seemingly a thing of the past.
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by: zoobab 1229699426|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Leaving aside the fact that software patents "as such" are not, in any case, admissible in Europe, this is a fundamental issue. Standards that depend on patents are not compatible with open source unless royalty-free licences are granted irrevocably. I therefore urge the European Commission not to compromise on this point, since doing so would vitiate the creation of a playing-field that is level for all and not just those with deep pockets - and nullify the entire point of the interoperability framework. There is no halfway house here.
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by: zoobab 1229698342|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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The UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) will still use a previously formulated test on software patents despite a court ruling which many took to be critical of its approach. The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) has said that the IPO's guidance could cause uncertainty and increase the cost of doing business in the software industry.
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by: zoobab 1229697442|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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There’s been Open Invention Network and Allied Security Trust, and now there’s RPX Corporation promising protection against the so-called patent troll. RPX, amusingly enough, was started by two refugees from what is widely perceived to be one of the biggest patent trolls around, Intellectual Ventures-founded by ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold (pictured).
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by: zoobab 1229697390|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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In Apple's latest legal battle, a wireless-entertainment company has sued the computer-maker for patent infringement, according to InformationWeek. EZ4Media submitted the filings to a Louisiana court, claiming that Apple TV, Airport Express, and even Mac computers infringe on a number of its patents. The company had originally purchased the patents from Universal Electronics (UEI) in March and alleges that three UEI employees left to work for Apple approximately a year before the launch of Apple TV.
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by: zoobab 1229697263|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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New research commissioned by the Intellectual Property Office's IP Crime Group shows that many businesses are not doing anything to ensure they protect their intellectual property. This is despite an overwhelming majority of businesses understanding the need to protect intellectual property. [...] So what this survey really underlines is that it is the media industries' obsession with preserving an out-dated business model based on enforcing intellectual monopolies that is out of step with the rest of society. The results provide further evidence that it is time the content industries got over this hangover from the 20th century, and moved on to more profitable activities like exploiting the incredible opportunities offered to them by the Internet.
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by: zoobab 1229695461|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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The Wine project has won an award from the SourceForge 2008 Community Choice Awards. We won the category: "Most Likely to Be Ambiguously and Baselessly Accused of Patent Violation". We would like to thank to the voters of SourceForge community for this fantastic award.
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by: zoobab 1229600806|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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