Suggestions on Letter-Writing 2004
-> [ Letters | What to do | Andre Rebentisch ]
Somewhat outdated but still instructive suggestions.
This page is german, but you can look for the correct domain of the parliament web site:
Put info whom to write to into the national wiki pages:
etc
Direct your message to your local !MPs and let them forward it to the appropriate party representatives and to the ministers in charge of the subject. Usually, this is the ministry of trade or the ministry of justice.
Tell them your own experience and draw the conclusions, mentioning for example:
- Programmers shall not be deprived of their work. When a programmer has made a program, he has the copyright on it, and no one else shall be able to restrict his right to publish or sell it or lay down the conditions of use without the programmer's consent. This is the very foundation of any working business model in the software market, and software patents undermine it.
Software patents promote only one business model: Impose a private tax on market players, divert resources into patent filings and lawsuits instead of R&D, perform litigation instead of innovation. This climate only supports megacorporations and oligopolists, it raises prices, slows down innovation, hinders competition, decreases variety and quality.
- It is easy to describe an algorithm as a computer-implementable method, the actual work is in doing the implementation. That's what programmers do. Therefore, the incentive must be for the programmer, in the form of copyright, without any legal uncertainty or risk of stepping onto patent mines.
Software patents have not encouraged innovation, but have stifled it. Broadly known examples are data formats and communication protocols using compression methods: Stac (ISDN), LZW (GIF), RLE (JPEG), MP3 where patents severely affect interoperability. (See http://swpat.ffii.org/patente/wirkungen/.)
- Algorithms are useless until implemented. Patenting algorithms means hindering others from making them useful. This directly hinders innovation.
- It's like patenting truths to hinder others from making any use thereof. Logic is a system, and making one part unavailable demolishes the system.
- The hope for a genius rewarded by a software patent has no support from real business. Actually, software patents are spread out like traps for others to step into by accident.
- The key to distinguish unpatentable logic from patentable subject matter is a strict definition of technical contribution, requiring the use of controllable forces of nature to achieve predictable results. The european parliament has provided such a definition, and it shall not get weakened.
Without requirement of a use of controllable forces of nature, claims become so abstract that they cover any implementation, not just a specific one. This is what makes software patents so harmful und unjust.
The task is about reverting EPO grant policy back to a lawful doctrine. It is not about legalizing illegal patents in the name of harmonization.
- It is not up to us to switch to doing patent business when we already know that it's bad. It is up to politics to save us from getting robbed by software patents.
- Explain that the US patent laws, the EPO is adopting, are designed to protect slave labor and not Intellectual Property. In order for US corporations to move production around between countries with cheap labor, they have to prevent their products from being copied by manufacturers in those countries and be sold into the markets. The US is putting pressure on countries to have the same patent laws. The US patent laws create market monopolies necessary to facilitate this use of slave labor, even for products that technically are not new inventions, but just variations over old themes. This is an attack on the work forces of countries that provide the bare necessities of a modern democratic society with a higher cost of living.
- The US patent laws the EPO is adopting, is protecting market monopolies by big corporations, which forces smart people to work for them instead of starting their own businesses.
- A good environment for starting up software development in Europe will encourage smart people in the US and around the world to come to Europe to build their futures there.
