Not so fast. Spin doctoring is no substitute for substance.
As Caesar used to say, "fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt" (people are ready to believe what they want to be the case).
The fact of the matter is that New Zealand has passed a law with some restrictive language, but this is far from abolition. Broad swaths of software patents can still be granted.
The rationale here was that they still wanted to allow patents of machines and devices and they had to draw the line somewhere since software these days is embedded in almost everything. I think New Zealand has a very good set of laws in place and has shown remarkable courage to pass this anti-software-patent legislation. Unfortunately, their legislation to support government surveillance and software backdoors is really terrible.
Since Mueller isn't a lawyer, and his only other credentials are being a paid lobbyist, yeah it matters. Sure a lobbyist might be correct, but why would you trust them for information to begin with?
And looking at his post with a sceptical mind would have you learn his only third party source is a magazine whose tag-line is "Maximising IP value for business".
Even if correct his post is blatant propaganda. In fact, I'd go so far as to question why he chose today to register an account on hacker news. This isn't the first patent related news we've seen.
Your personal attacks really don't have any relevance to the legal questions at hand. Trying to muddy the discussion with irrelevant speculation about people's motives is totally unnecessary when the legislation is there for any of us to read.
> Trying to muddy the discussion with irrelevant speculation about people's motives is totally unnecessary
In an ideal world, where we all had an infinite amount of time to research any and all items of controversy in their entirity, I would agree with you.
In this hyper-specialized world, where we basically look to others to do the research and summarize for us, motives are extremely relevant and it is the height of naivety to pretend otherwise.
No-one has time to become an expert on absolutely everything. To some extent, we have to choose who to listen to, and then trust that they are speaking true. Anything else is completely unmanageable. So your argument, while logically correct, is not applicable. In the real world, we don't take the sex offender's word that our child is safe on its pure merits.
When someone with a long and vivid history of acting against the interests of the community speaks, it is on them to overcome the prejudice against them, not on us.
I don't get it. Let's stipulate that he is an Oracle puppet. Why would that incentivize him to lie about what the bill actually covers? Regardless of his incentives, is he wrong that not all software patents would be prevented under this bill?
Disclosure: I'm a Microsoft employee, so I probably have some devious motives, too.
It is his job to create a perception that his side is winning. Because perception drives behavior and affects reality. Therefore every event is spun to make it look as good as possible for the pro-patent side so that actual innovators will get demoralized about resisting that tide.
No, I do not know why someone would consider it worth their while to pay for this. But someone apparently does, as is evidenced by his series of extremely confident, widely covered, and provably inaccurate articles on how the Oracle lawsuit against Google was going.
Basically, being an Oracle puppet is an extremely negative heuristic for being a useful voice on anything related to software IP. Absent compelling evidence to the contrary, I am inclined to ignore any and all opinions of said puppet.
And FWIW, being a Microsoft employee defending an Oracle stooge doesn't play all that well either.
> When someone with a long and vivid history of acting against the interests of the community speaks, it is on them to overcome the prejudice against them, not on us.
Who has a "long and vivid history of acting against the interests of the community"? It's clearly not Müller: [1].
Software patents are an abomination. I could stomach copyright on software, because at least one is still permitted independent implementation and expression. I can't copy your code, but I can rewrite it.
Software patents on the other hand put a fence around ideas themselves. You can't draw a cursor using XOR by implementing it yourself, period, for 20 years.
The patent system is deeply broken, and it doesn't even stop big players anyway. Really, Apple successfully sued Samsung, did it stop Samsung from taking over half the market? Does $1 billion in fines really matter or Apple or Samsung over the long term? By the time these cases are settled, it has already played out in the consumer marketplace anyway. You can't defeat consumer success with patent attacks. Microsoft's Android revenue shakedown won't replace the death of Windows if it happens, and it won't make Windows Phone/Surface RT a winner.
It's a game only lawyers, IP trolls, or paid industry shills love.
"Get a dozen sharp programmers together, give them all a hard problem to work on, and a bunch of them will come up with solutions that would probably be patentable, and be similar enough that the first programmer to file the patent could sue the others for patent infringement." -- John Carmack
This is obviously not true in many cases. There are countless algorithm problems where decades and thousands of pages of published literature on the problem go by before some researcher manages to make a material advance. Computer science is full of cases like this.
If all of the interesting problems were so trivial to solve, they would not be "problems" by definition. The idea that smart programmers could solve these problems any time they wanted to if they put their minds to it is unrealistic. They are considered "hard problems" precisely because countless smart programmers have failed to find a solution after no small amount of effort.
Well -- there are hard problems -- and then there are hard problems.
It seems that a lot of patents are being granted for solutions to problems that are only moderately difficult, if even that. Certainly, I have seen a number for which the solution seems quite standard given the problem. I think what happens here is that new technologies create new problems, which though not deep, are novel. These are solved in quite standard ways, in many cases; but since the problem is novel, technically, so is the solution, so the PTO grants a patent for it. And a large fraction of the patents being issued are of this nature.
I think the solution is to restrict patents to problems that are demonstrably hard -- of the kind that you describe, where there is objective evidence (in the published literature, for example) that people have thought about the problem for some time without solving it.
The key here is that patents are supposed to be non obvious to those "skilled in the arts" and herein lies the rub: who are those skllled in the arts? In my previous career (wireless and IC) I saw most patents as trivial for someone skilled in the arts: they were mostly byproducts of routine engineering design work. They were novel only in the sense that you are probably the first to work on a specific form. Yet they could appear rather deep and profound to the untrained eyes as you need a lot of training to be skilled in the arts in the first place. Can patent examiners truly judge the novelty of these patent applications?
And the funny thing is: if you come up with some real algorithm for some real hard problem it is unlikely that your algorithm can be protected by a patent, certainly not in its general form. The true algorithmic nature of your solution is likely too abstract and mathematical for a patent as patents do not protect laws of nature (physics and math qualify as laws of nature).
> It's a game only lawyers, IP trolls, or paid industry shills love.
I think it's a major problem when something like 60% of all IP litigation is over software patents, a relatively obscure area of the law until recently, but I disagree with this statement. I worked for two entrepreneurs who founded real R&D companies and considered patents to be a basic protection that allowed them to operate a small R&D company independently of a massive manufacturing company. These guys couldn't be further from the description of "lawyer" or "IP troll" or "paid industry shill." They're PhD's who have spent their entire careers inventing.
If you characterize everyone who relies on the existing patent system as a "lawyer" or "troll" or "industry shill" you'll make no progress in achieving the reforms of the system that need to happen. You cannot figure out how to solve a problem while understanding only one side of the issue.
"R&D company" that ships no produces seems a bizarre concept to me. If you're doing pure research and you don't want to manufacture anything, then outsource it, or partner with someone who can and sign them to an iron-clad contract protecting a trade secret.
I'm be curious if anyone can even name any "pure R&D" software companies that don't ship products, yet created meaningful advancements. Even in the realm of hardware, did RAMBUS really need patent protection?
Trade secrets you share with other companies are fragile rights. Do you want to invest a ton of money into a company built on a property right that could evaporate at any moment? Re: meaningful advancements, I think MPEG is a decent example, as well as some wireless companies (it's really hard to draw a clean line when it comes to wireless, because a lot of techniques could easily be implemented on a general purpose computer or in an ASIC).
As for RAMBUS, the memory industry is an interesting example. They all work on developing memory technologies, then pool the patents. The patents function to prevent free-riding on the collective effort by any particular company. The wireless industry works similarly (LTE, etc).
I don't mean to argue that the law should protect particular business models. But I think in the abstract, it's useful to be able to bundle up the fruits of some R&D into something that can be the subject of market transactions. I think it's worked amazingly for the semiconductor industry in the model of ARM, for example. The law can provide a mechanism for doing that. I don't think trade secrets are quite it, and I think we're really seeing the limitations of patents for that in the software realm, but I think there needs to be something. Otherwise, it'll be a race to see who can outsource most effectively to China because that's what matters when ideas can't be protected.
Unlike other microprocessor corporations such as AMD, Intel, Freescale (formerly Motorola) and Renesas (formerly Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric),[28] ARM only licenses its technology as intellectual property (IP), rather than manufacturing its own CPUs.
> I'm be curious if anyone can even name any "pure R&D" software companies that don't ship products, yet created meaningful advancements.
There are many examples (in addition to ARM) -- just think "research labs". Be they government-sponsored, private or academic, their primary function is R&D, not shipping products. One example of a private lab, off the top of my head, is SRI.
Also, though you may claim they don't count as "companies" -- universities.
Edit: Additionally, in the realm of hardware and semiconductors, most companies these days are actually fabless [1]. There is a study claiming that patents facilitated the entry of specialized design firms into the market, although incumbent industry executives didn't look on them too favorably [2].
BTW, Rambus is not the best example. They created a lot of controversy when they asserted their standards-essential patents, the same thing Motorola is doing these days. Whether they "really needed patents" depends on which side you're looking from. But for the industry in general (and I am horribly oversimplifying very nuanced conclusions), the answer seems to be yes for startups, and a mixed bag for big ones [2, 3].
rayiner wasn't talking about software. Software companies have an easy time "producing" their products. It's much harder in the hardware sector or when you invent car technology. Getting into those markets is expensive. Forging a deal with a car manufacturer, for instance, would put you in an extremely weak negotiating position. Patents give you some leverage and a defense mechanism when they go and use it without your permission.
So I also think ARM is a valid example of companies that wouldn't be alive if not for the patent system.
All that said, I'm not in favor of patents at all. Thinking of something should not give you ownership over a broad concept. Information should be shared freely, to improve upon and so everyone can enjoy the invention.
I disagree with this sort of extremism. What should not be patentable are basic "way of doing business" patents.
On the other hand, if someone slaves away for years and develops a truly new and unique compression technique, I don't see why that shouldn't be patentable. How is that any different from, say, a steel foundry developing a new unique alloy?
That's not as black and white as it seems. An implementation of a compression algorithm is typically a particular library written in a particular computer language. A specification of a compression algorithm is typically described in a specification document such as an RFC. We don't call an RFC an implementation.
What is patented is a method of compressing data using algorithm X. If you can thing of something else which wouldn't be considered compressing data using algorithm X, then you're free to use algorithm X for this new and inventive purpose.
I would argue that advancement in software is too damn important for the humanity as a whole to be hindered by the preferences of that person. Software will ultimately change us. Shape us.
I think that software will advance more rapidly without patents than with them, even if that means having less immediate financial benefit for the individuals involved in the discoveries.
But to take note of the stakes here, banning software patents fully would eventually end patents as such. The problem for the patents in general is that nearly all machine methods are going toward a general purpose machine, a computer, telling a robot what to do. So all innovations here are going to eventually be expressed as software (even if they involve innovations chemical reactions or factory automation).
I think it will be better ending this system but there are a lot of companies whose intellectual capital is tied up in patents and these will fight hard to postpone this end.
For example, how much have software patents ("junk patents") contributed to the USPTO's balance sheet? Is this relevant? In this position, can the USPTO self-regulate? I ask this not rhetorically, but sincerely.
If the small countries that restrict software patents had the market size of the US, it would not surprise me if they allowed more unrestricted patenting of software. But China stands as a counterpoint to the idea that market size is the differentiator.
Perhaps it is the willingness of US consumers to pay higher prices. This enables patentees to pass the expenses of patent office fees, court fees and lawyer fees to the consumer (even when the patents granted were not practiced to make the product: they're "junk"!).
I don't think the original patent idea was bad, only the recent years mutated it into an abomination.
A long time ago this model made sense. Inventors would invent and would be protected to benefit exclusively for a very short period of time (e.g. one year). After the grace period, it would be a free for all again, and people would move on.
Having patent durations of >1 year is obviously ridiculous, particularly 100+years protections etc.
My biggest gripe is that software gets double protection - copyright and patents. I would be ok with software patents if that meant you had provide the source code as part of the patent application, and if approved it would go into the public domain.
It's not really double protection, because patents and copyright cover different things. Copyright only protects the exact expression of what some software does. Patents cover the functionality of that software. In fact, since software per se is not claimed, the claimed functionality could be implemented entirely in hardware and still be covered by the patent.
No amount of copyright can protect the functionality, because 1) there are countless ways of implementing the same functionality and copyright only protects your specific way, and 2) copyright cannot legally cover functionality anyway.
As such, providing source code in a patent is of little value. (Although I have seen patents containing source code.) As long as you can reimplement the method being claimed by reading the patent with little undue experimentation, it has met its "enablement" requirement.
As Orwell wrote, "the English language ... becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."
Considering that patents are entirely a government creation, "ban" or "outlaw" does not apply, for such language treats patents as something apart from the state. Perhaps "stops issuing" would be more accurate, but it's not clear from the article whether that's actually the case.
I don't know. Every legal concept is entirely the government's creation, including both physical and intellectual property, so I'm not sure it's worth quibbling about that part.
Legal concepts that are derivative from the natural right to liberty, e.g. freedom of speech, are protected by the government, but that is not the same as them being created by the government. An individual certainly has liberty, and thus freedom of speech, in the context of a state of nature. He does not, however, have a guarantee that an organization with a monopoly on the use of force, i.e. a government, will protect that liberty.
I can't believe that there are so many people in a scientific, technical, industry like the software industry that believe in something as facially superstitious and handwavy as "natural rights."
I can't believe that there are so many people in a scientific, technical, industry like the software industry that believe in something as facially superstitious and handwavy as "natural rights."
As a first pass at a definition, anything you could do in the absence of any other people stopping you from doing it could be considered a "natural right."
That's not superstitious or handwavy, and I didn't have to belittle my audience to express it.
> Contemporary political philosophies continuing the liberal tradition of natural rights include libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism and Objectivism, and include amongst their canon the works of authors such as Robert Nozick, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard.
My problem with "natural rights" is that they're a way to take one set of arbitrary priorities and elevate them to some sort of law of nature, without having to justify them on utilitarian grounds. You have a right to property but not a right to education. Why? Because the former is a "natural right." Its no different from resorting to "because the Bible says so." Its also used to undermine democratic consensus in the same way as resorting to theology. Oh, everyone thinks there is a right to education? Wrong! Because the Bible says so... Err... Because its not a natural right, just some creation of government.
There are no legal rights in the state of nature. There is no liberty in the state of nature. These things don't exist as features of the land, they're concepts created by humans to curtail specific types of human behavior.
While intellectual property is almost entirely a legal creation, government is not necessary for property to exist. Indeed, John Locke considered property to be a natural right along with life and liberty.
The point is that intellectual property is property in the same way that quarks have "color." It is a relatively novel legal concept compared to physical property. In the US constitution it is completely distinct from other rights: You are assumed to just have rights. Not among the assumed rights are patents and copyright, which are a government granted monopoly.
I agree with you about patent and copyrights, but I think it's important that people view essential rights like property rights and freedom of speech as being truly inalienable -- that individuals have them as long as right and wrong exist.
>property rights and freedom of speech as being truly inalienable
That's a simply preposterous belief though, and we should treat it as such. Many people have their rights to property and speech infringed on a regular basis. There isn't even a consensus on what those rights entail, as is clear any time 'hate speech' is brought up.
Well yes, as soon as a creature needs to expend energy to obtain a thing they plan on using later, another creature is going to try to obtain it in a simpler way: by stealing it. And so, even apes and birds have a concept of 'property': things that are theirs, usually cached food, that they will take pains to hide and/or defend.
With humans it isn't quite so clear. The default societal structure for humans is the band, which is basically an extended family unit. In a band, property is shared by the group. If a member of another band sneaks in and takes something, that's theft and will result in retaliation. So a concept of property exists at the band level. But I don't believe that individual members of a band have stuff they are allowed to use but no one else.
It's only in more complex societies that private property at the individual level definitely exists. But these societies also have some form of government, even if it's just a tribal chief.
So if by 'property' you mean private (i.e, individual) property, it's not quite so clear which came first: property or government.
Except that's not true. Monkeys are supposed to give the eggs or other food items that they find to the senior members of their group. But sometimes they'll eat them when nobody is looking, or if they create a diversion (like they'll call like a predator is coming)
so theft can be done in group, especially when there's scarcity
People can and do protect what they believe to be their property. Families and tribes can and do protect the territory they believe to belong to their members.
I like David Friedman's description of property rights not primarily as moral or legal constructs, but as mutually recognized commitment strategies which discourage trespasses. He points out that territorialism in the animal kingdom is similar to property rights (obviously without the existence of a state). Animals mark their territory (e.g. with urine), and other animals tend to respect those boundaries, because there is mutual understanding that the territory holder will fight a trespasser to the death if necessary, and the damage to the trespasser (even a stronger trespasser) will most likely not be worth it. Perhaps the territory holder would be better off just retreating, but what makes it "property" is the near certainty that he won't retreat.
Like most normal well adjusted people, I don't steal and I expect and find that those around me do the same. The reason my coworkers haven't stolen the keyboard off my desk when I go to get coffee isn't the government, it is just because they have some base-level respect for me. Clearly the concept of property, at least as it exists in my office, is not an artifact of some governing body. It exists despite that; it exists without any threat of force.
Or is that most basic mutual respect now "the government" in an office environment? If that is the case then we are basically removing any useful meaning from the word.
That's a good point. The last time I was reading about this I found out that some anarchists (pacifists, maybe) refer to this idea as "possession", to distinguish it from property. It's not "your" keyboard (in this case it probably belongs to the company), but you're using it right now, so it would be indecent to take it away from you.
"The reason my coworkers haven't stolen the keyboard off my desk when I go to get coffee isn't the government, it is just because they have some base-level respect for me."
- Do you really believe that? If someone wanted your keyboard their thought process - if conscious - probably follows the following: "If I take that and get caught then I'll likely be fired. So it's not worth me putting my monthly salary of $5000 at risk for a $50 keyboard" Well what if you do get caught? Just tell them they can't fire you! You won't leave the building!! Then they'll call the police and I'll be charged with a
I don't think it's good or bad. I just think it's entirely inaccurate to think that if someone covets what you have that they hold back due to a base level of respect for the other person. If that held true there'd just be no crime period in society because everyone would say "I'm not going to do that because I'd hate for that to be done to me as another human being"
I get what you're aiming at but if you're holding the shotgun, that's not government. Government is when I cede the right to protect my forest with a shotgun in order that a government entity will do it for me. We give government a monopoly on force under the agreement that I generally should not be shooting people to protect my rights.
That's not entirely true, at least in the United States. That's part of the purpose of the 2nd amendment. We cede some of our rights to use force to the government, but things like Castle Doctrine and the 2nd amendment mean we also retain those rights in specific circumstances.
Another aspect of the 2nd amendment people often overlook (particularly gun control advocates) was that it was originally intended as a check to the power of the army. The idea being that should the government ever try to use the military to suppress the public, that an armed public would be able to fight back and presumably being bigger than the military, win. That theory has been greatly eroded in the last 70 years or so by the increasingly large gap between the weapons the military has access to and what the public has access to. Back when the constitution was drafted a rifle was a rifle was a rifle, and 200 soldiers versus 1000 citizens all armed with rifles, the citizens would likely win. These days with the military having tanks and jets and nightvision and all manner of other advanced weapons (including the much debated fully automatic rifles) means that your average group of citizens wouldn't stand a chance against the military in serious armed conflict.
It's a totalitarian government where the dictator and the sole citizen of the state are the same person, and the citizen works for the dictator (well, there's no choice). Government is simply the application of force to create rights. No more, no less.
But also, if you come onto my property, you don't have to cede authority to me, I'm still the government and I will make decisions about what happens to you, so you are bound to my laws whether you like it or not.
You need a society for a government to make any sense. One person defending their property is neither a society nor a government.
Until you have the minimum viable population for our species (i.e. the smallest group of humans that can avoid extinction) you cannot really have a society.
The inability to enforce rights in nature is independent of the existence of those rights. You might need a shotgun to defend your life in a "libertarian utopia", but that doesn't mean you don't have a right to it.
In fact, your hypothetical correctly assumes that people need to protect their stuff. This need is evidence of self interest. The fact that there are universal norms that allow the use of force to protect things is evidence of a right to property.
In other words, a victim of theft is rightfully angry. This lets us conclude that he has a right to be free of theft. This indicates a right to property.
There's a difference between legal rights and natural / human rights. The latter are ideals, the former are what are brought into existence by the application of force.
Intellectual property corresponds (somewhat poorly) to the natural right of being allowed to profit from your ideas.
You're free to define "government" in such a way, but that's not a very useful definition in a discussion about what role the "government" should play.
I think we went through this before. What was your definition of government again? A man and a woman alone together in a forest and the man has the shotgun?
Every legal concept is entirely the government's creation, including both physical and intellectual property, so I'm not sure it's worth quibbling about that part.
Not entirely true. I want to point out that we have to consider how lobbying is influencing lawmakers.
Sure, lots of things influence the government. But the point is that none of our legal concepts actually exist until the government decides to make laws and enforce them.
Very roughly - if the innovation to be patented (ie the software) is used to improve the operation of the hardware then it is patentable. So buffering code in a HDD chip is presumably patentable (-ed). However if its a new way to display email - probably not. Not a clear win, and apparently similar to UK case law.
"The computer program exclusion is the subject of two governmental supplementary order papers (SOPs). Government SOP 120 introduces a European-style 'as such' exclusion that is considered to be more consistent with New Zealand's international obligations and precedents. More recent SOP 237 introduces several additional new clauses intended to clarify the meaning of the term 'as such'."
US has banned 'software patents' long time ago. However, you can still patent a software being performed by a processor or computer, which then becomes 'hardware'. NZ has now caught up with US. It is not what you think it is.
Merely being performed by a computer does not make software patentable in NZ under this new law. The inventive step has to involve the hardware to be eligible. They did just make a broad swath of software inventions non-patentable.
I suspect that people will start writing their patent claims like this:
"A method of representing numbers as binary strings in the registers of a CPU, and manipulating those registers such that the output is the representation of the sum of the input numbers."
That is what happened in America when we "banned" math^H^H^H^Hsoftware patents. Software itself is not patentable, but the use of a machine to execute specific software is. So the NZ equivalent of "on a computer" will be "manipulating CPU registers" or some similar nonsense.
Kiwi here. As another commenter mentioned, don't be. Overall, I think things are going downhill. The New Zealand Law Society recently reported to the UN Human Rights Council indicating that we've passed a number of laws recently that are in breach of human rights.
- We've very recently passed an odious bill to legitimise spying on NZ citizens.
- We've recently passed a bill that cannot cannot be challenged in court. (IANAL, don't ask me how this can be the case).
- We've recently passed a bill (copyright infringement) that presumes guilt.
In 2010 many New Zealanders staged a huge protest against mining conservation land (owned by the government, accessible to everyone). The government stood down. Yesterday I discovered permits for mining exploration have been granted on conservation land. Technically, this is land that was not under explicit discussion in 2010, but it unquestionably violates the spirit of the protests.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&o...http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...
We're one of the few western democracies that hasn't banned or restricted shark finning. We'd rather have an estimated NZD 6m/yr (IIRC).
We'll have a few million dollars instead of an entire species (Maui's dolphin).
Don't be. This is the same country in which the PM thinks it's ok to literally walk out of a Q&A session with the press regarding a widely disputed bill that's being rushed into law.
Rushed into law is normal now. I must see the statement Passed Under Urgency most weeks. This is what happens when you give a banker the reins (reigns?).
Did you ever do that thing in primary school where you put one finger in each corner of your mouth and say "My Dad's a national banker"? If you didn't, I acknowledge that it's weird, but it was funny when I was eight.
Anyway, back to the point! We can now do the same and say "John Key's a National banker".
Not that I dislike the National Party in general. Just the current National Party.
Good news. NZ is already in the top-5 economically free countries while still maintaining a respectable social safety. And a couple SaaS heavyweights. Plus, no snakes.
The real test of this will be if software companies flood to New Zealand to tinker to their hearts content without fear of litigation...
or if they flee NZ for fear of invalidating any patents they could have brought on their upcoming software.
I'd like to be able to say it will be the former, but I bet corporate lawyers will be pushing for the latter (if only out of a sense of self-preservation).
If the product is created in NZ that uses technology patented in US for example, would it still be legal for them to do business in US, like offering services?
That depends on who is suing you, and where they file.
I remember a decision from a few years ago that said something to the effect that any activity that involved transmission of data through the US could be interpreted as having happened in the US, even if the computers, their owners, and operators all resided outside the US.
They say they've adopted UK case law, which they claim is more restrictive than the overall European practice, but even under UK rules, hundreds of thousands of European software patents are valid. HTC challenged four Apple software patents and claimed in each case that the invention was not patentable because it was a computer program "as such" (today's New Zealand bill also excludes only patents on programs "as such"), and succeeded on only one of them, and even that one was overturned on appeal.
For further detail see the link in my first post to this thread in which I warn people against believing what they hope to be the case just because it makes them feel good, no matter how wrong it may be.
As more and more people write code and become technically literate, I think we'll see lots of this sort of thing. Once the majority of normal people "get it" then it's all down hill for those trying to control ideas.
If an idea is truly novel and valuable to the marketplace no patent is needed because the novelty itself provides ample time for you to 'recover' your investment.
Either no patents or very short patents[<=12 months for anything] is a basic requirement for a progressive society.
Are there any good articles about how people in countries which allow software patents can benefit from this New Zealand body of law, such as incorporating as a New Zealand company and avoiding US jurisdiction for patent lawsuits?
Here is a question for the lawyers out there (which I am not): would it be possible to conceive a legal framework somewhat similar in spirit to the GPL, but with the goal of making any patent relying on it free of charge, ie. such that a patent delivered under those terms would be free of use, but also impose the same terms to any patent building up on its content?
I'm glad this happened. For things like copyright, I thought there were international conventions - countries that were lax were hounded by others diplomatically. Is this not the case for patents?
You're right on. There's a WTO treaty on the Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and it requires patents to be available in all fields of technology. See TRIPS Art. 27: http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips_04c_e.htm
That's probably part of the reason why New Zealand did't actually ban software patents today. For more information on why today's bill is not tantamount to the abolition of software patents, see my other comments on this thread.
Wondering the same thing. What would it take to set up an equivalent of an LLC there to hold the IP of a saas business? And would Americans be able to do a tax pass-through (no or limited NZ tax liability and no change in US tax situation).
Keeping the software company in a NZ trust and using that to own a US LLC (for US operations) might be a good way to minimize IP liability.
NZ is not the first country to disallow software patents (also patents on game rules and business methods in some countries). I'm guessing something is stopping Americans from exploiting that. We are talking about the country that taxes its citizens for what they earn while they live in another countries. Only sure way out of this stupidity is to ditch the US citizenship.
As Caesar used to say, "fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt" (people are ready to believe what they want to be the case).
The fact of the matter is that New Zealand has passed a law with some restrictive language, but this is far from abolition. Broad swaths of software patents can still be granted.
Here's my more detailed take on it: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/08/new-zealand-parliament-ad...
And this is what a publication read by patent lawyers says: http://www.iam-magazine.com/blog/Detail.aspx?g=96d4aeaf-dedf...