short summary of a long email
I’ve just spent several hours reading through European legalese, and boy do my eyes hurt. Also my brane. Despite all the flapping in various places, it seems like the Council (in the dramatis personæ, the Bad Guys) have actually accepted the bulk of what the Parliament (the Good Guys) proposed, and the only two major points of disagreement between them are (a) cleaning up the line between patentable and unpatentable items, and (b) exemptions for interoperability. The latter is a sort of offshoot of the reverse-engineering thing I mentioned last night; in summary, it appears to say that if you need to get two pieces of equipment to talk to each other and the only way to do it is via a patented mechanism, then we’ll look the other way while you violate the patent. Obviously I’m paraphrasing, glossing, and removing any useful restraints from the actual wording, but Parliament want this to go through as-is, and Council think it’s asking for trouble. As for the line between what can and can’t be patented, well, that’s always going to be a problem anyway, but a wily Frenchman named Rocard has put together a damned fine document which does as good a job as I’ve seen yet of nailing this particular piece of jelly to a tree.
The upshot is, I’m no longer sure what I’m lobbying my MEPs to do, other than "Follow that Rocard guy, he’s good". Unlike some of the more militant people in this particular scrap, I’m not actually an advocate of a blanket ban on patents for software or anything else; I’m an advocate of sane patents and prevention of companies using abuse of the patent system as their means of business. I figure if I’m smart enough to come up with something that, in computer terms, is the new sliced bread or paper clip, I should have some means of sharing that with the community but at the same time getting something more than a slap on the back and "good job, waider!" for my troubles.
The upshot is, I’m no longer sure what I’m lobbying my MEPs to do, other than "Follow that Rocard guy, he’s good". Unlike some of the more militant people in this particular scrap, I’m not actually an advocate of a blanket ban on patents for software or anything else; I’m an advocate of sane patents and prevention of companies using abuse of the patent system as their means of business. I figure if I’m smart enough to come up with something that, in computer terms, is the new sliced bread or paper clip, I should have some means of sharing that with the community but at the same time getting something more than a slap on the back and "good job, waider!" for my troubles.