GregNews "IP lunacy"

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

It seems Greg is having more and more "fun" recently thanks to all the
"lunatics" around him.  We've been contributing such a substantial 
portion to this fun that, as an exception, I quote a whole issue of 
GregNews.  If you don't know what GregNews is, read

        http://swpat.ffii.org/players/aharonian/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 22:42:17 +0200
From: patnews@ns1.patenting-art.com <patnews@ns1.patenting-art.com>
To: clients@patenting-art.com <clients@patenting-art.com>
Date: Thursday, August 05, 2004, 10:03:05 PM
Subject: PATNEWS: IP lunacy from Lessig, EFF and the Munich city government

===8<==============Original message text===============

!20040805  IP lunacy from Lessig, EFF and the Munich city government

Check out the following news item: http://kwiki.ffii.org/?Lessig040610En.
It reports on a June opening ceremony at a German university, where Larry
Lessig "warned under thundering applause that we are living in era of
'IP McCarthyism'."  ... "Previously, Lessig has spoken of 'software
Stalinism' in similar contexts".  Apparently he is extending his inadequacy
in law to achieving an inadequacy in history.

Here's a bit of fun - take one specific sentence for Larry's latest book
"Free Culture", and combine it with dicta from any of a number of Supreme
Court and Circuit decisions (a paragraph from any of these cases will do),
and prove that Lessig is not competent to teach/advise/practice IP and
constitutional law.  First person in San Francisco who emails me with the
answer gets lunch at my favorite Chinese spot.

Now Larry is a Director of the EFF, so it isn't surprising that the EFF's
patent efforts are well, Lessig-ish.  What follows is a note from the
EFF posted to a European list by Jason Schultz, who heads up the EFF's
patent effort.

                              ====================

- ------- Forwarded Message
Date:    Tue, 22 Jun 2004 18:34:11 -0700
From:    Jason Schultz
To:
Subject: Re: EFF and patents (fwd Re: [Fsfe-ie] EFF Project)

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.  EFF completely supports
the anti-swpat efforts in the EU.  We believe that the software patent
system has been a miserable failure for innovation and competition here
in the U.S.  This is even more true for so-called business methods.
We wouldn't recommend anyone else go down these roads any time soon.

    [Greg note: a miserable failure?  Any empirical data to back
    up this assertion? I know of no such reliable data.  Maybe
    Jason and Larry have a list of names of software patents that
    are attacking the American way of life with their Communist
    basis .... whoops, I was watching an Internet clip of Joseph
    McCarthy while writing this PATNEWS, and got confused.

    Also, like them or not, software and business methods are here
    and being used.  Any lawyer advising their clients not to go
    down such a road is incompetent to practice IP law.]

As for Brad's comment, its more his position personally than ours
officially.  If people want our official position, tell them they're
free to contact me directly and I can answer any questions.  You can
also forward any part of this message along to others to explain where
EFF is on this issue.

Also, to be clear, our new patent busting initiative isn't meant to
reform the whole patent system or take on software and business-method
patents as a class.  Rather, it's targeted at helping individuals,
non-profits and small businesses who are threatened by bogus patents
and can't afford lawyers fight back against those who are threatening
them.

Hope that helps.  It was good chatting with you.  Hope to run into you
again at another con.

- - Jason
                              ====================

Until knowledgable IP lawyers in Europe band together to fight the logical
idiocy of software not achieving a "technical effect", it will give comfort
and aid to those less knowledgable to act like complete idiots.  One such
group of idiots is reporting the following idiocy from the Munich city
government, who need to spend more time at the Hofbrau House.

    EU Software Patents Jeopardise Munich's Linux Migration

    Munich, 07/30/2004 -- When the city administration of Munich decided
    to migrate its IT infrastructure to the Linux operating system, it
    made headline news around the world. That project is now being
    threatened by a proposed European Union directive on software
    patents. The directive is pushed for by the governments of Germany,
    the UK, France, and other countries on the EU Council.

Yes, it is quite innovative for Munich to adopt Linux.  But given that
there already many software patents in Europe, the proposed EU directive
adds nothing to any minimal threats the Munich government might face
from using Linux.

    Software patents are considered the greatest danger to the usage
    and development of Linux and other Free Software. A cursory search
    by FFII revealed that the Linux "base client", which the city of
    Munich plans to install on the desktop computers of approximately
    14,000 employees, is in conflict with more than 50 European
    software patents.

Poor business models are the biggest danger to the development of Linux.
And conflict with 50 European software patents?  Means nothing.  Here
in the US, basic Linux is in conflict with hundreds and hundreds of US
software patents, none of which has hurt Linux to date (despite the
market hyping exaggerated thrats from a certain public patent BUSINESS).

    Today Jens Muehlhaus, an alderman from the Green Party, filed two
    motions in which he calls on the mayor of Munich, the Social
    Democrat Christian Ude, to contact the federal government of Germany
    on this matter and to analyse how the EU software patent directive
    affects Munich's Linux project.

Easy answer, especially in Europe, where in litigation loser pays.  That
is, Munich's use of Linux has nothing to fear from software patents.

    The politician, a supporter of open source, warns that patent
    infringement assertions could take entire departments of the city
    administration out of operation. He attached the preliminary result
    of FFII's patent search to his motions.

Yes, and software patents are worsening global warning, attempts to
educate women, the fight against AIDS - that's right, the love of
software patents is the root of all evil.  Look, just this week a
software company, 3-2-1 Studios, was shut down because of asserted IP,
the very danger Muehlhaus is worrying about.  But the form of IP
asserted?  COPYRIGHT.

    Mr. Muehlhaus expresses concern over the future ability of open
    source software to meet the needs of the city administration if
    software patents massively hinder its development. Related caveats 
    have been voiced by the SME association CEA-PME and by Deutsche
    Bank Research.

    A week earlier, the chief information officer of Munich, Wilhelm
    Hoegner, said it is "indispensable" to check on the consequences
    of the software patent directive to open source software. Any such
    oversight would be a "catastrophe for Munich's Linux migration
    project, and for open source in general".

Gee, I always thought the horror fantasies of German literature came out
of Northern Germany.  Maybe Munich politicians are spending too much time
at the Hofbrau house.  "Catastrophe" - relax.

    Florian Mueller, an active participant in the software patent debate,
    sees the EU Council on the wrong track: "Open source is a historic
    opportunity for Europe to save costs and create jobs. Schroeder,
    Blair and Chirac should demonstrate leadership and stop their
    civil servants from sacrificing the open source opportunity to
    the insatiable patent bureaucracy, lest some large corporations will
    shut down open source and many SMEs." Mr. Mueller is a software
    entrepreneur, and an adviser to Europe's largest open source software
    company MySQL. 

Again, more nonsense.  First, software patents have had no noticeable
affect on open source and SMEs in the United States, and we have ten
times as many software patents as Europe, and much more hostile litigation
practices.  The only thing Mueller is being innovative with are his
litigation fantasies.  Second, software copyright can be used just as
nastily to disrupt open source as patents.  In fact, I can use the
copyright laws to do worse damage to open source than I can with patents.

And copyright is a potential threat that lasts for over 100 years, 
instead of 20 years for patents.  There may be 50 European patents that
impact base Linux in Europe, but there are thousands of copyrighted
computer programs that impact base Linux, all assertable against Linux
as easily as asserting a patent.  In both cases, in a court you can 
easily fight off the assertion, but that costs money in both cases, and
in both cases the amounts of money both can disrupt Linux efforts.

Like I said, I blame all of this nonsense on the responsible lawyers in
Europe who refuse to publicly fight the idiocy that software does not
achieve a "technical effect" (not to be too assertive - a growing number
of examiners at the PTO are asserting "technical effect" as a way to
raise 101 objections that State Street should have shut down once and
for all).

Greg Aharonian
Internet Patent News Service

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
330,000 votes 3000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/