Some minor corrections/suggestions:
On 25 Jan 2005, at 15:34, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
---8<-------------------------------------------------- Dear Council Representative,
On behalf of Irish Free Software Organisation (IFSO), I am writing to you
^--the
regarding Directive 2002/0047 COD. IFSO requests that this directive, "on the patentability of computer related inventions", be changed from an A-list item to a B-list item on the grounds that it permits the patenting of software ideas - an outcome contrary to the stated aim of most of the previous Council members.
The original version from the European Commission contained unclear wording which would have allowed the patentability of software ideas. This issue was fixed by the European Parliament in September 2003. In May 2004, similar unclear wording was reintroduced by the European Council.
IFSO believes that the members of the European Council were deceived by the wording of the replacement amendments presented to them, and IFSO would like to see this directive fixed while it's still possible.
First I would like to summarise the two problems caused by software idea patents, and some of the follow on harm. I'll be brief as you may already be familiar with this issue. If you'd like us to expand or back up any of these, our contact details are at the end of this letter.
Problem 1:
Every individual and business can currently write software.
The current cost of writing software is zero. If this directive legalises
Strange sentence structure, how about: Currently, there is no inherent cost in writing software.
the patenting of software, then writing software would carry the risk of patent infringement litigation. This cost is far too high for most individuals and businesses. The avoid litigation, a software writer could
*To* avoid ligitation
change "could" to "must"
perform a patent search to confirm that none of the ideas they implement have been patented. The lawyer's fees for such searches are high, and the software writer would still not be certain that the lawyer missed something,
lawyer *didn't* miss something
or that a judge would interpret a patent the same way the patent searcher did. Even the cost of challenging a claim of patent infringement is too high for most individuals and businesses. Thus, most people would lose the
didn't someone estimate this to be around $2,000,000 ?
Have to go out now, may have more comments on the remainder,
Ian.
-- Founder, The Freenet Project http://freenetproject.org/ CEO, Cematics Ltd http://cematics.com/ Personal Blog http://locut.us/~ian/blog/