www/philosophy limit-patents.html po/limit-pate...

[Luiji Maryo]

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Added files:
        philosophy     : limit-patents.html 
        philosophy/po  : limit-patents.translist 

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CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/limit-patents.html?cvsroot=www&rev=1.1
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Patches:
Index: limit-patents.html
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+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- Parent-Version: 1.71 -->
+<title>Giving the Software Field Protection from Patents
+- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/limit-patents.translist" -->
+<h2>Giving the Software Field Protection from Patents</h2>
+
+<p>by <a href="http://www.stallman.org/";><strong>Richard
+Stallman</strong></a></p>
+
+<p>Patents threaten every software developer, and the patent wars we have
+long feared have broken out. Software developers and software users
+-- which in our society, is most people -- need software to be free of
+patents.</p>
+
+<p>The patents that threaten us are often called "software patents", but
+that term is misleading. Such patents are not about any specific
+program. Rather, each patent describes some practical idea, and says
+that anyone carrying out the idea can be sued. So it is clearer to
+call them "computational idea patents".</p>
+
+<p>The U.S. patent system doesn't label patents to say this one's a
+"software patent" and that one isn't. Software developers are the
+ones who make a distinction between the patents that threaten us --
+those that cover ideas that can be implemented in software -- and the
+rest. For example, if the patented idea is the shape of a physical
+structure or a chemical reaction, no program can implement that idea;
+that patent doesn't threaten the software field. But if the idea
+that's patented is a computation, that patent's barrel points at
+software developers and users.</p>
+
+<p>This is not to say that computational idea patents prohibit only
+software. These ideas can also be implemented in hardware -- and many
+of them have been. Each patent typically covers both hardware <em>and </em>
+software implementations of the idea.</p>
+
+<p>The Special Problem of Software</p>
+
+<p>Still, software is where computational idea patents cause a special
+problem. In software, it's easy to implement thousands of ideas
+together in one program. If 10% are patented, that means hundreds of
+patents threaten it.</p>
+
+<p>When Dan Ravicher of the Public Patent Foundation studied one large program
+(Linux, which is the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system) in
+2004, he found 283 US patents that appeared to cover computing ideas
+implemented in the source code of that program. That same year, a
+magazine estimated that Linux was .25% of the whole GNU/Linux system.
+Multiplying 300 by 400 we get the order-of-magnitude estimate that the
+system as a whole was <em>threatened by around 100,000 patents</em>.</p>
+
+<p>If half of those patents were eliminated as "bad quality" -- i.e.,
+mistakes of the patent system that is -- it would not really change things.
+Whether 100,000 patents or 50,000, it's the same disaster. This is why it's a
+mistake to limit our criticism of software patents to just "patent
+trolls" or "bad quality" patents. The worst patent aggressor
+today is Apple, which isn't a "troll" by the usual definition; I don't
+know whether Apple's patents are "good quality", but the better the
+patent's "quality" the more dangerous its threat.</p>
+
+<p>We need to fix the whole problem, not just part.</p>
+
+<p>The usual suggestions for correcting this problem legislatively
+involve changing the criteria for granting patents -- for instance, to
+ban issuance of patents on computational practices and systems to
+perform them. This approach has two drawbacks.</p>
+
+<p>First, patent lawyers are clever at reformulating patents to fit
+whatever rules may apply; they transform any attempt at limiting the
+substance of patents into a requirement of mere form. For instance,
+many US computational idea patents describe a system including an
+arithmetic unit, an instruction sequencer, a memory, plus controls to
+carry out a particular computation.This is a peculiar way of
+describing a computer running a program that does a certain
+computation; it was designed to make the patent application satisfy criteria
+that the US patent system was believed for a time to require.</p>
+
+<p>Second, the US already has many thousands of computational idea
+patents, and changing the criteria to prevent issuing more would not
+get rid of the existing ones. We would have to wait almost 20 years
+for the problem to be entirely corrected through the expiration of
+these patents. We could envision legislating the abolition of these
+existing patents, but that is probably unconstitutional. (The Supreme
+Court has perversely insisted that Congress can extend private
+privileges at the expense of the public's rights but that it can't go
+in the other direction.)</p>
+
+<p>A Different Approach: Limit Effect, Not Patentability</p>
+
+<p>My suggestion is to change the <em>effect</em> of patents. We should 
legislate
+that developing, distributing, or running a program on generally used
+computing hardware does not constitute patent infringement. This approach has
+several advantages:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>It does not require classifying patents or patent applications as
+"software" or "not software".</li>
+<li>It provides developers and users with protection from both existing
+and potential future computational idea patents.</li>
+<li>Patent lawyers cannot defeat the intended effect by writing
+applications differently.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>This approach doesn't entirely invalidate existing computational idea
+patents, because they would continue to apply to implementations using
+special-purpose hardware. This is an advantage because it eliminates
+an argument against the legal validity of the plan. The US passed a
+law some years ago shielding surgeons from patent lawsuits, so that
+even if surgical procedures are patented, surgeons are safe. That
+provides a precedent for this solution.</p>
+
+<p>Software developers and software users need protection from patents.
+This is the only legislative solution that would provide full
+protection for all. We could then go back to competing or cooperating
+... without the fear that some stranger will wipe away our work.</p>
+
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+
+<p>Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to <a
+href="mailto:address@hidden";>&lt;address@hidden&gt;</a>.  There are also <a
+href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a> the FSF.  Broken links and other
+corrections or suggestions can be sent to <a
+href="mailto:address@hidden";>&lt;address@hidden&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+<p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
+        replace it with the translation of these two:
+
+        We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
+        translations.  However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
+        Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard
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+
+        <p>For information on coordinating and submitting translations of
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+Please see the <a
+href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations README</a> for
+information on coordinating and submitting translations of this article.</p>
+
+<p>Copyright &copy; 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.</p>
+
+<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/";>Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License</a>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2013/01/30 05:09:45 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>

Index: po/limit-patents.translist
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+<!-- begin .translist file -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/select-skip-translations.html" -->
+<div id="translations">
+<ul class="translations-list">
+<!-- English -->
+<li><a 
href="/philosophy/government-free-software.en.html">English</a>&nbsp;[en]</li>
+</ul>
+</div> <!-- id="translations" -->
+<div class="netscape4" id="skiptrans"></div>
+<!-- end .translist file -->