[DMCA-Activists] Straight Up on Software Patents in Europe

[Seth Johnson]

One might think that drawing a distinction between "computer-implemented
inventions" and software "as such" is merely ridiculous, because a patent on
software in a device isn't limited to that device.  A patent on software in
a device is a patent everywhere -- because software is abstract.

However, attempting to enact a law for all the Member States of the European
Union by pretending to set limits on patenting software, putting so much
perverse effort into deceptively codifying a practice that is so plainly at
odds with everyday common sense, is not merely absurd, it's obscene.

The whole "Directive on Computer-Implemented Inventions" enterprise is an
enormous, coordinated act of criminal duplicity.

No matter how much they say they're preventing patents on software "as
such," the software patent directive sets no limitations whatsoever on
patentability.  What they really mean is that they don't want there to be
software "as such" that we can presume is free of patents.  They don't want
us to have the presumption that we may use abstract logic freely.

You either allow software patents, or you don't.  You either allow people to
patent abstraction, or you don't.  It doesn't matter what language you
express it in; it doesn't matter that you express it in words or numbers on
a page or in a file on a hard drive or on a website or in a field
programmable gate array: it still translates into pure, ideal, abstract
logical processes.

Everybody who uses a computer to create programs knows that it's a special
machine designed to process abstract logic.  Everybody who owns a computer
can use and express pure logic in code and execute those processes without
regard for whether anybody else might have declared that they have a claim
to them because they happen to use them in a device.

No.  If you want to patent abstractions, then present a Directive that says
so.  Tell us outright that you want people to be able to lay claim to
algorithms by putting them in a device.  Don't tell us that you won't patent
software "as such."  That isn't just confusion -- that's criminal intent to
deceive and defraud those you purport to represent.


Seth


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