Software Patents

To be honest, this is just some rubbishy University work repurposed because I felt bad about not updating the site for so long.

Copyright protects authors but doesn't hurt any honest person. Patents, in contrast, are 20-year monopolies that the government grants on broad and general ideas. In America, where software patents have already been implemented, large companies are being forced to register vast numbers of trivial patents in order to ensure that if someone tries to take them on it'd be mutually assured destruction ... just like the real cold-war. As for little companies and open source, well, they don't have a prayer.

Software developers are perfectly protected without patents rearing their ugly heads. Everyone who writes a computer program automatically owns the copyright to it. Oracle, one of the largest US-based software companies openly acknowledges this on their website. To quote:

"The Company believes that existing copyright law and available trade secret protections, as opposed to patent law, are better suited to protecting computer software developments."

Yet even this massive company is forced to spend millions taking out patents in order to survive against competitors who would try to eliminate them by levelling lawsuits. The formal or in-formal licensing agreements which interlink every major US software company protect the rich, but only those in the upper echelons of the industry are in this position. Small developers and in particular Open Source software are open to assault from big business who might see them as competitors.

Microsoft frequently mentions patents in a very close connection with the competitive challenge from open source. In July of 2004, a memorandum by a senior manager of Hewlett-Packard was leaked. It predicted that Microsoft would "use the legal system to shut down open source" but would firstly await the outcome of the legislative process concerning software patents in the European Union. These thoughts were based on a patent cross-licensing negotiation that the HP executive had with Microsoft. Other objections to Microsoft's intentions concerning the abuse of software patents have been bought up by the German newspaper 'Der Spiegel', who stated that software patents create jobs in Redmond but not Munich. Applying the American model of software patents will stifle European creativity, and lead to the multi-billion software trading defecit between the EU and America becoming even larger.

Economically it makes no sense for the EU to implement software patents. As well as crippling domestic ingenuity, the monopolies which Patents essentially grant mean that everyday software will rapidly inflate in price. Large companies, which these patents mainly protect, are also far more likely to outsource to non-EU companies than small or medium sized businesses, resulting in a loss of jobs and income for many European citizens. Even those large companies who do keep close ties to the EU can find themselves in the same sort of position as Oracle, again to quote:

"Oracle is forced to channel a significant portion of its financial resources into patent protection of its assets, rather than using those resources in further innovating and expanding its computer software products."

A single patent application can cost over 30,000 euros, putting it far out of reach of a small business or individual. Far from helping defend the ideas of inventors, it merely shows that the entire system is biased against them.

Quite aside from the financial implications, there is practical implementation to consider. If someone patents a particular element, then nobody else can attempt a better implementation for the next 20 years. This can result in utterly shoddy, insecure implementation which is forced upon a populace who have no choice but to accept it.

For the financial, technical and ethical reasons I've just outlined, I feel that software patenting should in no way be allowed to become law within the European Union