Talking Software Patents with a Politician? 75
agent dero asks: "I'm currently trying to land an hour or two of my local representative to the House of Representatives so I can talk about software patents, amongst other things. I'm looking for the best way to describe the pitfalls of Software Patents to somebody who hasn't the slightest clue what Open Source is, let alone how software patents will hurt it. How can a computer geek relate the evil in patenting algorithms to a non-computer geek to where it will have an effective impact?"
The basics... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The guy is a busy man with lots in his mind, keep it brief and to the point at all times, in fact if you have an hour of time, present for 30 minutes and give the rest for him to either ask questions or politely take leave as he needs, prepare to present to not just your rep, but maybe his staff and other reps that might choose to join in (it's possible).
2) Impassioned emotional pleas are no good here, construct a good well founded argument and you will do awesome. Do your homework throughly before going in. Also if you happen to know a lawyer that's willing to help you, ask him to help draft your statements before going in (better still ask if he can join you in presenting to the rep).
3) Prepare oral arguments (the old fashioned Powerpoints or whatever your favorite pesentation software is will do here), as well as a brief (no more than 5 page) written argument to leave with him.
Having little knowledge in particular about open source software patents in particular other than what's on Slashdot, I'll leave the rest to you to reasearch and form up.
Try this and you might just be amazed at your reponse. I look forward to seeing your arguments drafted into a floor bill at the House
Re:Earning money off of IDEAS (Score:3, Insightful)
The main issue (Score:3, Insightful)
is not just with 'Open Source' or other trendy keywords, but it just happens to be one of the worst hit by it (as most open source projects have no commercial backing to help with legal issues or licensing etc.)
Ok, so i'll try and explain it in ways that your average local politition will be able to understand (mr g.w.bush comes to mind as an exception though..).
The main goals behind patents are to protect an inventors hard work, research and ideas from exploitation by restricting other peoples rights to duplicate/copy/rip/etc the idea.
For most industries the research process which is needed to create the idea is usually costly (both in time and money), in this context you can think of patents as allowing the inventor(s) to recouperate that initial investment and to control revenue from the invention while it's still considered 'new'.
In todays scociety the software industry is a completely different beast compared to what I would consider as the 'old stle' industry (think of the industrial revolution etc.). Thinking of ideas new software inventions isn't very hard, thousands of new products are designed every day due to the low cost of researching and designing software inventions.
Basicly the two industries are reversed, so the actual hard work and investment is in developing the product and getting it to market.
The first point that I was trying to demonstrate is that somebody could think up 10 product ideas every week and patent them (al la Microsoft & IBM), but they may not even have the technical expertise or money to create it.. generally all software ideas are useless until they have been developed.
So by patenting ideas in an invention-per-second industry, you are restricting the rest of the industry from making a product of it.. bad karma.
My personal gripe (and I'm sure most of you share the same opinion) is the US patent offices reluctance or inability to check if the patent breaks one of the simple rules set out: 'No bussiness methods or mathematical algorithms', 'Must be non-obvious to a professional from within that industry' and 'There must be no prior art' (i'm sure theres another one.. cant be assed to think of it right now).
So this means that I could for example patent a really simple theory, such as 'transfering memory from one computer to another via analogue signals across a distributed network'... and the patent office would probably approve it if it had not been patented before and the wording was sufficiently obfuscated so that only non-technical lawyers and civil servants can understand it..
So given those two pieces i've brought up, you can think of thousands of different 'inventions' in an industry where inventions alone are fairly worthless, and apply for patents with them.. and a lot of them would probably get approved due the lax standards at the patent office.
So given that our industry moves at such a fast pace (compared to something like the petroleum extraction business) and the length of the patent is relatively very long it restricts the actual development of new software (e.g. developers and companies are probably going to be scared of getting sued, or having unreasonable licensing terms pushed upon them).
Anyway.. try and extract as much drunk ranting gibberish out of it as possible, and hopefully you can use some of the arguments i've brought up.
Jus my £0.02
Here's how I would put the argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents exist only in order to encourage innovation. This much is essentially in the Constitution, because the right for congress to create patent and copyright laws is preceded by "To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts..."
The way that patents encourage innovation is to provide an incentive to expend resources to create an invention. The incentive is the exclusive right to use that invention. Many inventions take millions of dollars to create, so the patent plays an important role for those inventions, at least with the way our society currently operates.
Here's the rub: most software inventions do not take millions of dollars to create, since the resources involved are almost always simply a guy and a computer (or pencil and paper). We've seen this many times, as fairly obvious ideas are re-invented, or old, overly generic patents are applied to unrelated inventions years later. Here, patents stifle innovation instead of promoting it. There already exists an incentive to invent, and since it is so easy to do so, patents just provide an unnecessary friction.
There are also many specific problems with software patents. The term is too long considering the pace at which the field moves. The patent office is woefully underequipped to evaluate software patent applications. Patents are often incompatible with free software, which has shown to provide a huge amount of value (for the Progress of Science and the useful Arts!), probably more than software patents ever have.
Re:Earning money off of IDEAS (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not the biggest fan of patents, but the argument you're making here doesn't make sense.
Re:Earning money off of IDEAS (Score:3, Insightful)
What I would do is go at this problem from three directions.
First, explain why software patents are bad. This is where you need to come up with examples. Patently (no pun intended) absurd patents are good targets for this. Other good examples include companies in your home state being sued for software patent infringement. In this latter case, it's more important that they are companies in your state getting sued - it's not really relevant whether the patent is a good one or not.
Second, explain why getting rid of software patents are good. Ask John Kerry and Bob Dole about the efficacy of running on a platform of "Vote against X." You also need to show what positive things will come from your proposal. You can do a little philosophical handwaving here because there's never been a time we haven't had software patents; but you can extrapolate a little, or find examples in other countries, which should be compelling.
Finally, anticipate arguments you will get from proponents of software patents. You shouldn't incorporate them into your presentation unless they are obvious, but they will help you refine your work. Look at it this way. If you say "Some people might say X, but..." you are coming across as defensive, argumentative, and negative. But if you account for the counterargument, and then build your argument to exclude it entirely, you just seem positive, certain, and well-prepared. Head off any objections before they happen, in other words. You can't do this for everything (of course), but it's important that you not end every point with "but here's what the other guys will say and why they're wrong."
I do agree with other posters that your presentation should be as short as humanly possible while still getting the point across. There's the attention span issue. If your Congresscritter gets bored, your chances of success drastically diminish. And software patents are a pretty dry topic even for people really interested in them.
Oh yeah. And note how this post roughly follows the outline I suggested. I don't bother with part 3 for Slashdot posts.
Re:Here's how I would put the argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't the free software movement another source of progress? This is composed of loads of people who can "afford" to invent software, with little more incentive than "cool" points among their peers.
Re:Gratuitious use of links (Score:3, Insightful)
My 2 cents (Score:3, Insightful)
* Give a printed outline of your strongest arguments for future reference
* Use examples, preferably from local or well known companies/projects.
* My opinion would be that I'm not against Software Pattents, but that the current pattent system is too inpractical for actually promoting innovation.
- Compared to the speed of developements the duration is to long.
- Court battles can't be won before a pattent becomes obsolete, and are too expensive.
- Because of lack of standardization it's impossible to find if you're infringing, esp. because possible infringement extends to all tools you are using (OS, editor, desktop, etc.)
- Because of the currenty used funding system the (US)PO approves to many (trivial) pattents.
- The current system favors large corporations over the little man
- You'll find more arguments on the net, but these alone should get your point across.
* I would try to make some analogy's with how books work.
- Books are also mainly protected by copyright.
- Compare some of the current pattents with Stephen King having a pattent on Horror stories.
* The only OSS specific points I would make is:
- It's easy for closed-source compettitors to find possible infirngements, but hard the other way round.
- A lot of OSS lacks financial and juridical support to fight back.
- A lot of OSS has no financial means to obtain pattents themselves.
just my 2 cents.
Few other points (Score:4, Insightful)
If you allow someone to patent brushing teeth, then you actually end up stifling innovation (no power toothbrushes, no water piks, no...you get the idea), and the People (e.g., voters) get hurt. On the other hand, if a company can only patent a toothbrush (or is it a process of producing toothbrushes - patents were supposed to protect factories and such?), then other companies are free to innovate, more jobs are created, and the People both have more work and better teeth.
If the software world, 10 different companies can have the same idea and implement it 10 different ways (one will write 20 lines of C, one 2 unreadable lines of perl, one 200 lines of basic, whatever). The old idea of patents would only apply to the 20 lines of C, not to the idea - 20 lines that are already covered (as I said) by copyright.
As an extreme example of bad patents, how's "Using a computer to do work." Heh.
Anyway, good luck!
Re:The basics... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can visit your Congressman's office in Washington or in your home district when he visits. You can go alone or with a group. Call or write ahead for an appointment if you want to talk to him or her directly. Don't expect more than a few minutes. Dress conservatively, be polite and get right to the point. Listen carefully to his replies and comments, so you can follow-up on any important points later. It is usually better (and easier) to visit staffers in the home office first. If you can visit their Washington office, it can actually be of more value to talk to their staff member in charge of science and technology issues. You can talk to your Congressman during his visits to your district, the Washington staffers stay in Washington.
Staffers are responsible for gathering information and working it into policy for their Congressmen. Educating them is therefore a very important accomplishment.
Add a layer of abstraction (Score:4, Insightful)
Start by talking about how everything idea is built upon the ideas of others. As Isaac Newton said, I can see further because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. Tell him how the whole ideas of patents and copyrights were designed to ENCOURAGE creativity and new ideas, but they've been coopted to do the opposite. Explain to him the logical conclusion of what will happen if we don't fix that -- the US will quickly lose its leading role in technology, art, and entertainment.
You should only mention Open Source, in the context that people are creating computer programs and sharing them for free, in order to build up their own creative pool of work, in order to work around the laws that are mostly preventing such collaborative efforts. Mention that these folks are forsaking some amount of money in order to build these things and return to the model of building on the works of others, and wanting others to build upon their work. Restricting them from doing this doesn't make sense. Also mention that every large enterptrise is using this Open Source software, so promoting it helps all companies.
Concentrate on the reasoning behind the Constitution's patent/copyright clause. Explain how it requires balance, and that not only is it currently off balance, but large corporations have enough money and clout to successfully lobby for even more restrictive laws. Mention the Mickey Mouse extensions. Talk about how small companies are where most of the creativity in the world happen, but the laws are increasingly preventing them from creating.
Basically, summarize the larger issues. Read up on Lawrence Lessig's work and other such material. Try to get in as much of the larger issues so your rep can see the Big Picture.
Re:Earning money off of IDEAS (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, but one can't get a patent on 'treatment of erectile disfunction with a pharmaceutical' though he can get a patent on Viagra. So you can have Levitra without violating the patent on Viagra.
And both patents will stand up in court.
Forget about open source (Score:2, Insightful)
The issue here is the USPTO is issuing patents on software that they don't understand the ramifications of. That is all that needs to be stopped.
Clearly a better mouse trap might be patentable. But the USPTO has issued patents on functions that are obvious, in use by *everyone* and their attitude is this: "Let the courts work it out".
That sounds fine to the USPTO which is lousy with lawyers, lawyers love that stuff, legal fees and litigation. But how would you like to receive a cease and desist letter from a patent holder for something you and everyone else has done the same way for 10 years, and *THEY* have deep pockets. Sue them? Wait for them to sue you? Call a lawyer and pay a $10,000 retainer? That is the USPTO approach. Let the litigants pay their lawyers to figure it out in court. There are companies set up for this express purpose, litigating patents for stuff that is in use by lots of others that they can get the USPTO to issue to them, and they can demand licensing money from those who can't afford to litigate against them.
That's what's wrong with software patents. Patents creating expensive needless litigation over the obvious, issued by lawyers at "Law Office No. 82", who just don't have the expertise to understand the issues or the technology, or that the patent application is for something that is neither *new*, *nonobvious* or *patentable*.
If you could convince your congressman to help rein in this behavior at USPTO that would be worthwhile. Make the USPTO get the expertise somewhere to evaluate the patent applications for software in at least as thorough a manner as patents on devices. I somehow doubt it.