Interview of Alan Cox on Software Patents at Reboot FM radio.
Please help to make the transcription
http://media.ffii.org/AlanCoxRebootFM/softwarepatenet-reboot-fm.ogg
( 41:29 )
AC: The first big problem with that legislation basicly legalising is patenting anything. So, for the kind of things which, for ex, will become suddenly patentable and in fact patent will be granted on, are, taking an order on a mobile phone,
Pardon?
AC: taking an order on a mobile phone...?
yes.
AC: eh...scrollbars, so if you are particularly attached to your desktop, it might look very different under the European Patent System. It's a big threat not just to Free Software, but to Small business. And they have to care about both. Where I'm coming from, in Wales, small businesses are really important.
AC: And small businesses cannot afford to pay patent lawyers, even if they could afford to pay a patent lawyer, the huge numbers of bogus patents out there and this vast amount of money, you need about a million euros to fight a patent lawsuit, mean they cannot defend any patent they're given, and they cannot defend themselves against any bogus patent. So it gives the large compagnies the ability to steamroll any small innovative company. And that's really dangerous for the progress of Europe.
AC: The second thing it does is what's happening in the US which is really alarming, and that is it drives, it actually drives software engeering jobs out of those countries, because compagnies instead in investing in European jobs, decide the patent situation is too risky. They hold the patent in Europe or the USA, they do all the software development in countries which do not have problematic patent laws, or countries were patent laws are overlooked. And then they use third parties to import this product into Europe and the USA. If there is ever a patent lawsuit, the import company falls, all the money is safe in a tax heaven. And the result of this is no jobs.
( 43:16 )
AC: Now we got countries like Tcheckoslovakia. hmm, correct, the CZ republic, yeah (laugh) I apologize... a bit out of date. ...coming into the EU... We've all these brilliant programmers, we have all this great potential because they have still have low labour costs, so it's a great potential, actually so they build a real software industry in these countries.
And the Patent Directive stands a real chance of simply driving all the compagnies outside of the EU, bypassing all of these programmers, preventing the EU from developping in these areas and building them into part of sort of a high standard level that we have in the rest western Europe.
???? dutch? ???
So hmm, ok, but patents, there is in a patents in general are not bad, but its only the software patents?
AC: Patents, well patents... you can... from an economics point of view, patents in general are bad. People of the free market, people seem to have this illusion that patents are part of the free market system. From an economics point of view patents cause dead losses and patents are an inefficiency and a distortion in the market.
AC: Now, we have patent law, because otherwise somethings like drugs, would not ever be created, because the amount of money you have to put up front means that the conventional economics based on it says it's not worth doing this. Now there is a pure economics argument that eventually enough people will be dying of the disease that they'll put up the money to creat the drug, but I'd say that's a very brutal way of living. As if society chooses to distort the market.
44:51
In the software case, because the overheads for software are so low, and because software is so much speech, it seems very
such huge inefficiency
