IMPACT®

Government responds to e-petition about software patents

The Government's response to an e-petition to "make software patents clearly unenforceable" has been to reiterate the status quo:

"The Government remains committed to its policy that no patents should exist for inventions which make advances lying solely in the field of software. Although certain jurisdictions, such as the US, allow more liberal patenting of software-based inventions, these patents cannot be enforced in the UK.

The test used to discern between patentable and non-patentable subject matter in the UK has recently been clarified by the courts, and is applied rigorously by the Patent Office. Under this test, the true nature of the advance being claimed in a patent application must be determined, and if this advance lies solely in the field of software, or another non-technical field such as methods of doing business, the patent will not be granted. If the advance being made by an invention does lie in a technical field, it must also be non-obvious and sufficiently clearly described for the invention to be reproduced before a patent will be granted by the Patent Office.

The recently published Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, an independent review commissioned by the Government, recommended that patent rights should not be extended to cover pure software, business methods and genes. The Government will implement those recommendations for which it is responsible, and will therefore continue to exclude patents from areas where they may hinder innovation: including patents which are too broad, speculative, or obvious, or where the advance they make lies in an excluded area such as software."

This response is unsurprising given that this is also the view of the Patent Office.

IMPACT comment
We can see, and have sympathies with, both sides to this argument. Whilst clearly there is a need for improving the protection that is available for software beyond its basic protection as a literary work under copyright law, the 20 year monopoly conferred by a granted patent seems out of step with the way that software is developed.

Software development is a fast moving, constantly evolving, area, whilst patents are (arguably) better suited for inventions/methods that remain constant for longer periods.

Lawyers and language

Language is one of the main tools of the lawyer. It really gets my goat though when I still see lawyers using "hereunder" and "with reference to the above" and similar language, especially youngsters like trainees. This is just bad nowadays. Seth Godin makes a good point about the use of language in an item he wrote on his blog today.

New Creative Commons licence

TechnoLlama carries a review over the weekend of the new Creative Commons 3.0 licences and is a good summary of the new versions.

Steve Wood's last blog posting...

Steve Wood has published his last post on the FOI and Open Government Blog and is moving into, er, an arm of the Government. I think that this is actually a very smart appointment by the Office of the Information Commissioner.

More Spam Spam Spam

I have written before about the ineffectiveness of anti-spam legislation ("Spam Spam Spam" and "Complexity of junk email networks revealed" are examples).

I read an article in the monthly journal of the IET the other day. It spoke about the CTO of, I think, ScanSoft's views on spam (ScanSoft now called Nuance). Broadly, he seemed to be saying that the volume of spam output has increased significantly over the past 6 months or so with the effect that even though spam filters typically operate at 97% effectiveness, with more spam being generated a greater volume gets through. He seemed to be saying that the problem was going to get so bad that governments are going to have to seriously get tough on spammers and start enforcing anti-spam laws heavily.

This got me thinking. I don't really see this happening. Compared to the troops coming back from Iraq or the state of the NHS, I'm struggling with the idea that any government is going to make anti-spam a top political agenda and devote resources of any significance to trying to track down and stop spammers.

Maybe we need a more radical solution? I don't have the answers but wonder if something like requiring all email addresses to have associated anti-spam and anti-virus services a bit like drivers having to have insurance might be an option? Lots of things shout at me that such a scheme would be unworkable but I think targeting the redistribution is perhaps the approach.

It seems to me that Governments ought to view spam in the same way as drugs. Mostly, they originate in a different country and people pass them on. Its the distribution chain you need to tackle in terms of enforcement.

I'm sure that there's a much bigger debate than just trying to enforce ineffective laws.

Fairtrade Fortnight 26 February - 11 March

Fairtrade Fortnight begins on 26 February 2007. The primary objective of Fairtrade is (taken directly from the Fairtrade website at www.fairtrade.org.uk) "to develop access to markets in developed countries for producers who tend to be marginalised by conventional trading structures. Typically Fairtrade focuses on small-scale producers, although this depends on the particular community".

The Fairtrade Foundation was established in 1992 by CAFOD, Christian Aid, New Consumer, Oxfam, Traidcraft and The World Development Movement. The Foundation is a UK member of Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO), which unites 20 national initiatives across Europe, Japan, North America, Australia and New Zealand.

FLO owns a registered trade mark for FAIRTRADE and licenses use of the mark to suppliers. Goods must meet internationally recognised standards in order to qualify for a licence.

During Fairtrade Fortnight, local groups across the country link up with supermarkets, smaller shops, churches and schools to promote Fairtrade. Stamford, in Lincolnshire, has been been awarded Fairtrade status, having run a campaign since 2005. The campaign involved gaining support of the town council and ensuring that FAIRTRADE goods are readily available in the town.

According to the Fairtrade Foundation, UK sales of products bearing the FAIRTRADE mark are running at £195 million per annum (50% growth year on year since 2002).

If you haven't previously bought FAIRTRADE products, why not make an effort to do so over the next few weeks? In addition to tea, coffee and confectionery, products such as clothing, wine, beer, flowers and sports balls are available under the FAIRTRADE mark. 

eCommerce Awards 2007

A couple of us from the team went along to the regional Awards last night. It was an excellent event and big congratulations to all the winners and those that were highly commended. In particular, congratulations to Imagesound for winning East Midlands eBusiness of the Year.

Best eBusiness start up

• Winner: Cruise Ahead Ltd
• Highly commended: Fillmybelly.com

Best use of eBusiness

• Winner: NetComposites
• Highly commended: Eden Farms

Increased productivity through the use of ICT

• Winner: Hallmark Consumer Services Ltd
• Highly commended: Derby Road Health Centre

Most innovative use of ICT

• Winner: Data Applications (UK) Ltd
• Highly commended: Bia Associates Ltd (t/a QADEX)

Increasing exports through ICT

• Winner: Imagesound
• Highly commended: Hike Bike and Ride Ltd

eBusiness of the Year

• Imagesound

You can view a list of finalists here.

The Surveillance Society - a fresh look

In September 2006, the Information Commissioner's Office published a report on the "surveillance society". This wasn't picked up on widely until November 2006 when the International Conference of Data Protection Commissioners announced that we were already in a surveillance society. (See our brief report on the International Conference)

After the November conference, most of the media hoo-ha was over the number of CCTV cameras in the UK and that kind of thing, and it was easy to miss the more important policy points discussed in the September 2006 report. I re-read the report as part of my prep for the Identity Society event that I attended earlier in the week and think that it's worth quoting some of the policy discussion points in the report which give an idea of the way that regulation of this area could go in the future.

All quotes are from the full report.

Resources
The full report
A summary of the report

Coming soon: 26 April 2007

Keep the evening of 26 April 2007 free. More details soon. Watch this space!

Microsoft French-fried to the tune of £777m.

French telecoms giant Alcatel-Lucent has been successful in its patent infringement action against Microsoft. The US Federal Court in San Diego has held that two of Alcatel-Lucent's patents (related to the standards used for converting audio into MP3 files) had been infringed.

Microsoft is set to appeal the decision. According to the BBC website Microsoft (along with many others) had previously taken a licence this technology from Faunhofer, the German firm widely credited with ownership of the disputed technology. If ultimately successful Alcatel-Lucent could potentially target the many companies using the technology including Apple and Real Networks. Information Week has a good summary of the situation.

Alcatel-Lucent became the largest telecoms equipment company in the world on the merger of France's Alcatel with the US company Lucent in November 2006. On that merger the new company inherited (in addition to the one mentioned above) a further 5 intellectual disputes between Lucent and Microsoft.